My SEO consultant told me to delete all my old blog posts and I almost listened

So I hired this guy from a Facebook group who claimed he was an SEO guru. He looked at my site and said I had 40 posts from 2018 that were all 'thin content' and I should just delete them all to clean up my rankings. He said Google hates old irrelevant posts. Well I was about to hit delete on everything but then I asked around in another forum and someone told me to just update them instead. So I rewrote 15 of those old posts with new info and added some fresh links. Turns out those 'thin' posts had been driving like 30% of my traffic the whole time. Deleting them would have been a disaster. Has anyone else had someone give them advice that was totally backwards like this? What did you end up doing?

3 comments

3 Comments

miles_garcia1d ago

Lol reminds me when a "pro" told me to delete all my images for faster load time.

gavinwells2d ago

Yeah that thing about "thin content" gets thrown around way too much. I used to think the same thing honestly, like if a post was old and short it was basically worthless. But then I saw someone break down their analytics and realize their old posts were still pulling in organic traffic years later. That changed my mind completely. It's kind of wild how Google seems to value some older content even if it's not super in depth. Now I just refresh the date, add a few updated sentences, and leave everything else alone. Way less risky than nuking your whole archive.

alicehernandez1d ago

That 2019 post I wrote about thermostat wiring still gets 200 hits a month, @gavinwells. You're right, Google doesn't care if it's short. I just swapped out a dead link and bumped the date. Way less work than rewriting everything.

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