An audit sorts every page into keep, update, merge, or remove based on whether it still gets visitors and whether it is still true. The dangerous pages are the ones that are wrong rather than the ones that are merely old.

What actually goes stale

Age alone is not the problem. A page written four years ago describing something that has not changed is fine.

Four things genuinely go stale.

Facts that changed, including prices, hours, service areas, staff, and anything regulatory.

Services you stopped offering, which still have a page attracting enquiries you have to decline.

References to a moment, such as a year in the title, a new product that is no longer new, or an event that happened.

Pages that were never good, written to cover a term, thin, and now diluting the rest of the site.

Of those, the second is the most expensive. A page for work you no longer do wastes the enquiry and the visitor's time, and it may be one of your better-performing pages precisely because nobody has touched it.

Building the list

Three sources combined into one spreadsheet.

Every page that exists, from a crawl of the site rather than from memory, since the pages you have forgotten are exactly the ones this exercise is for.

Visits and enquiries per page, from analytics, over twelve months rather than one.

Search impressions and clicks per page, which show pages that are visible but not being clicked, a different problem from pages nobody sees.

One row per page with those three numbers is enough to sort the whole site, and most small businesses have never seen their own site listed this way.

The four decisions

Keep and leave alone

Still accurate, still getting visitors. The largest group and the one that needs nothing.

Update in place

Getting visitors and containing something wrong or missing. Fix the facts, add what is now known, refresh the date, and keep the address unchanged.

This is where most of the value is. A page already receiving visitors is worth more corrected than any new page is worth writing.

Merge

Several thin pages covering the same subject, competing with each other for the same searches. Combine into one substantial page, redirect the others to it.

The merged page frequently outperforms all the originals combined, because the standing consolidates rather than splits.

Remove and redirect

No visitors, no accuracy, no purpose. Redirect to the nearest relevant page rather than deleting outright, since something may still link to it.

The pages to be careful with

Two categories where the obvious decision is wrong.

A page with few visitors and real enquiries. Low traffic looks like a candidate for removal, and a page bringing two good jobs a year is worth more than one bringing four hundred uninterested visitors. Check enquiries, not visits.

A page with impressions and no clicks. It is being shown and not chosen, which is a title and description problem rather than a content problem. Rewriting those is cheaper than rewriting the page and frequently fixes it.

What removing content actually does

Worth being honest, since deleting pages is sometimes recommended as a tactic.

Removing genuinely poor pages can help, by concentrating attention on the pages that matter. Removing pages indiscriminately because they are old loses whatever standing they had accumulated for no benefit.

The safer default is to update or merge rather than delete, and to reserve deletion for pages that are both worthless and inaccurate. Redirects preserve most of what a removed page had.

The audit that fits a small business

Annually, in the quiet period, taking a morning.

  1. Crawl the site and list every page.
  2. Add twelve months of visits and enquiries.
  3. Read the top twenty pages for anything factually wrong.
  4. Check every price, hour, and service area wherever it appears.
  5. Find pages for work you no longer do.
  6. Identify duplicates competing with each other.
  7. Fix the top pages first, since that is where the visitors are.

Working from the top down matters. Auditing alphabetically means spending the morning on pages nobody reads.

The thing to check first

Before any of the above, search your own site for your phone number and your address.

A former number sitting on an old page is the single most costly staleness available, and it is common on sites that have been running for years. The same applies to an old service area, an old price, and a member of staff who left.

That check takes ten minutes and occasionally finds something that has been costing enquiries silently, and the crawl that produces the page list also reveals what nothing links to, as covered in how pages should link to each other.

Frequently asked questions

What actually makes a page stale?

Facts that changed, services you stopped offering, references to a moment such as a year in the title, and pages that were never good. Age alone is not the problem.

Which stale page is most expensive?

One for work you no longer do. It wastes the enquiry and the visitor's time, and it may be a well-performing page precisely because nobody has touched it.

How do I build the list?

Crawl the site for every page, then add twelve months of visits and enquiries and search impressions per page. One row per page sorts the whole site.

What are the four decisions?

Keep and leave alone, update in place, merge competing thin pages into one, or remove and redirect. Updating a page already getting visitors is where most value sits.

Which pages are easy to get wrong?

A page with few visitors but real enquiries, which looks removable and is not, and a page with impressions but no clicks, which needs a new title rather than new content.

What should I check before anything else?

Search your own site for your phone number and address. A former number on an old page is the most costly staleness available and is common on long-running sites.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Pages from four years ago describing work you stopped doing?

We list every page against twelve months of visits and enquiries, then fix the ones people are actually landing on.

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