Have you been thinking about deleting pages from your website? Perhaps the page advertises a service you no longer off, the content feels outdated, or you’re considering consolidating several pages into one.
Whilst you may think deleting a page is an easy fix, this can have a detrimental impact on the performance of your website in search engines such as Google or Bing.
Established and indexed pages will have built up a certain level of authority over time and will help contribute to the overall visibility of your site.
Not only will these pages appear in search engine results for related keywords that they have built up rankings for, but they will also play an important role in strengthening a site’s topical authority and backlink profile.
When you delete a page from your website, whether it’s attracting visitors or not, you’re effectively removing a piece of your site’s foundation.
Think of it like this: one missing brick may not be enough to bring a house down, but over time, removing enough bricks will weaken the structure.
Similarly, deleting enough pages can compromise the overall structure and strength of your website, which can potentially cause other pages to rank lower in search results.
What should you consider before deleting pages from your website?
Check Traffic
Use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to see how many visitors a particular page is receiving. You can also use this free tool to identify exactly where your traffic is coming from. Visitors may be finding the page directly using the URL, clicking through to it from search engines, or being referred from other websites such as ChatGPT.
Understanding where your traffic is coming from can help you make an informed decision on whether it’s safe to delete and ensure you don’t lose important traffic.
Check Impressions
Use Google Search Console to see how often your page is appearing in search results, even if users aren’t always clicking through to it. Impressions give you an idea of the visibility of the page in search results and the search queries that the page is showing up for.
If a page is receiving regular or a high number of impressions, this means that it is contributing towards your website’s online presence. Deleting this page could impact the visibility of the overall website, resulting in lower rankings and fewer visitors.
Assess Internal Links
Pages on a website often work together by linking to one another. This can help guide both search engine crawl bots, and users, through your content.
These links make it easier for users to find related information and can ultimately lead to conversion, whether that be a sale or getting in touch.
Not only this, but internal links can help pages pass value to another page, which can help boost the perceived authority of the connected page in the eyes of search engines. Deleting a page that plays a part in this internal linking structure can weaken the performance of other pages.
You can use tools such as Google Search Console, site crawlers, or even manually check to map connections between pages.
Consider How Users Engage with the Page
If you’re thinking of deleting a page to consolidate its content elsewhere on your site, its helpful to understand how users are engaging with the page first.
Free tools like Microsoft Clarity allow you to see where and how visitors are spending the most time on a page, including how far they scroll, and which sections receive the most attention.
For example, if Microsoft Clarity shows that the main content of a page appears ‘above the fold’, meaning the area a user sees on their screen without needing to scroll, and users are reading it without scrolling much further, it shows that the content is working well where it is.
Moving this content to another page could push it lower down, where fewer people are likely to see it. The less people that see it, the lower value the content has.
Check For a Change in Intent
If you’re considering deleting a page because its performance has dropped over time, it’s important to check whether search engines have changed what they show users for that topic in results.
Searcher intent is the reason behind a user’s search. Are they looking for information, looking to buy something, or trying to find a specific website? For example, Google might show blogs for one type of search query but show service-specific landing pages for another. The search engine identifies the intent behind each query and returns what it considers the most relevant results. Intent can change over time, which can impact the performance of your page.
Before deciding to delete or consolidate a page, check the type of content that search engines are currently showing for related search terms. If they’re now showing blogs but your page is a service page, this shift in intent could explain why your pages rankings have dropped.
Not sure where to start? Reach out to the team at Engage Web today.
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