Identify low-value pages
Identify low-value pages
1. Crawl your site with a tool like Screaming Frog to get a list of every URL, check for pages with missing elements, and investigate whether they are worth fixing.
Check for things like titles, headings, and meta descriptions, and export the information to a spreadsheet.
2. Merge and redirect duplicated pages by comparing the content, and determine which one has the best information and most visits.
Select the pages you no longer need on your site.
3. Merge and redirect thin pages with less than 500 words.
Read the lower word count page, and if it has anything valuable to add to the page with a higher word count, add it before redirecting the page.
4. Use Google Analytics, Behavior > Site Content > All Pages to look at the total visits to each page on your site, identify which pages receive the least traffic, and determine which pages are not worth keeping or updating.
5. Check your off-site metrics such as backlinks and number of referring domains pointing to each page, using a tool like Ahrefs.
Pages with no links may be of lower value. See which pages have social media shares. Pages with no shares may be of lower value.
6. Go to Google Search Console and check the click-through rate (CTR) of your pages to determine how often they are visited from organic search.
Look for pages with low CTR to understand if, and why they are underperforming.