Some bloggers who are trying to make more money online have started deleting several of their old blog posts. While it may look like they’re doing themselves a favor, I recommend a different approach.
Why would probloggers delete old content? Well, some previous posts talked about topics outside of the main theme of their blog. These bloggers believe that erasing old, unrelated content will help focus visitors on more relevant content.
While it’s true that pruning your blog will help drive traffic to your favorite blog posts, you are leaving money on the table.
In Tagalog, sayang! (Loose translation: What a waste!)
I often tell my internet marketing friends that nothing you publish on the web is wasted. So here’s my recommendation about blog posts you don’t want:
1. Start a NEW blog somewhere else.
2. Copy/paste the old blog posts that you no longer want in your main site into the new external blog site.
3. Ask your webmaster or programmer to create “301 redirects” from your old blog posts to their new location in the blog you set-up in Step 1 above.
4. At the bottom of those transferred blog posts, provide a link to your old/main blog.
5. Search your old/main blog for links to your old blog posts, and edit or even delete those links.
Here’s what will happen…
People who visit your old blog will no longer have directly, one-click access to the old blog posts that you want to retire. That will help you meet your objective of focusing the attention of your site visitors.
But people who use the search engines and still see links to your old blog posts (the ones which you want to retire), will click and be redirected to your new blog.
They will read your old blog posts in the new blog, and perhaps even visit your main blog.
Now why would some bloggers go through all this trouble?
1. They don’t want the old blog posts to interfere with the way their main blog makes money online.
2. They don’t want to suffer SEO penalties for having a site that has missing pages.
Bottomline: Please do not delete your old blog posts.
Either redirect them to some folder in your main site, or to some other external site.
Remember, nothing you publish online is ever wasted. All you need is a bit of creativity, and you will always find a way to make the most of what you have contributed to the web. 🙂
