How to handle outdated, unoptimized blog posts receiving little or zero traffic?

[SamKlep]

I'm doing some overdue spring cleaning on our WP blog. Some big visual updates are in the works, but currently I'm working on pruning and updating some poopy and outdated content. Many of the older posts weren't written with SEO in mind and were posted to the blog merely as an extension of our monthly enewsletter.

Here's an example: http://pq.systems/2FkQyVG

This post needs a lot of work to meet our new standards. The content is thin, readability is weak, kw targetting is non-existant, the visuals suck, zero links, and the charting software mentioned has since been replaced with another solution that we are currently promoting.

There are quite a few other posts with similar issues...

Any thoughts on the best way to handle these posts?

From poking around similar Q&A threads, it seems my options are:

1. Create new updated post, remove old post, 301 redirect from old to new
2. Create new updated post, add blurb & link pointing to new post at the top of old post
3. Edit/update old post, add "This post was updated....etc" blurb to top of old post

Any other options or opinions on which solution I should go with would be much appreciated!

[lydiagilbertson]

Hey Sam!

I would try to sort these posts into categories like "posts that could be useful for SEO", "posts that have backlinks but I do not want to keep", and "posts that are of no use at all". For the ones that could be useful I would try to figure out a way to re-target them to make them more useful (since they are not getting traffic at the moment). For the posts that have backlinks, you can pass their link equity by 301 redirecting them to a similar post if you do not want to keep it around. For posts that don't have backlinks and you don't want to keep, simply adding a noindex tag may be your best best to keep it out of the index and from competing with other pages on your site for rankings.

Obviously, each site cleanup has a unique situation and this may not fit in with yours, I am totally open to discussion on this as there is not a definitive "right" answer.

Have a great day!

Lydia

[SamKlep]

Thanks for the response Lydia! It's tedious, but the process you described is exactly what I ended up trying (https://www.screencast.com/t/ujdst1UxEpqK). Great to know I'm on the right track before continuing to audit 400+ pages one-by-one

[lydiagilbertson]

Glad that it was helpful!

[julie-getonthemap]

Good news is that after I did the same tedious process myself, my SEO results went up!