Is it better to delete old job pages on a recruitment site?

[AxonnMedia]

My client (online recruitment) has over 1.5 million pages indexed, the majority of which are old job posts and listings since they began.

I wanted to know if it would be better to keep all of the pages, or advise my client to delete some of the archive as these pages will no longer be attracting traffic.

[StreamlineMetrics]

I'd recommend re-purposing the pages with expired listings. I imagine a lot of those pages rank pretty well for longtail phrases (for example something like "part-time dump truck driving job in rome, georgia") which are highly targeted and likely have minimal competition. Even if the job opening is no longer available, there is still value in keeping that page alive for the sake of ranking in the search engines. A couple of suggestions -

1. Set up a contact form/email opt-in for users to fill out to "let me know when jobs like this become available." This enables you to capture useful contact information from your users which you can use as you see fit.

2. Provide links to similar job listings that are available. For example, put on the page "this job listing has expired but check out other jobs in Rome, Georgia or dump truck driving jobs within 50 miles", etc. This way you keep the user on your site instead of them going to a competitor's site.

Otherwise, if you decide to delete a lot of these pages then you'll lose any existing rankings/traffic as a result.

[AxonnMedia]

Thank you. This makes complete sense, some great recommendations for making the old pages have some on-going purpose.