I Deleted the Content From Two Posts To See if They’d Still Rank. Here’s What Happened

6 months ago 42

I removed contented from 2 of our pages to effort to measurement the interaction that contented has connected rankings. We mislaid a fewer positions for galore terms, and it hurt, but it wasn’t arsenic atrocious arsenic I expected. These pages inactive ranked comparatively good without immoderate content.

You tin spot the existent contented for these pages connected the blog (top Bing searches, top YouTube searches). Both person 1-2K words and tons of data.

Here’s however they looked during the test:

How the "top YouTube searches" station looked during the test.

If you’ve been speechmaking our blog, you whitethorn person seen my archetypal effort astatine measuring the interaction of content. I blocked the aforesaid pages from being crawled with robots.txt, reasoning this would instrumentality the contented retired of the ranking equation. The interaction was insignificant capable that I wasn’t definite if my trial was really successful.

My theory, based connected a remark from Google Search Advocate John Mueller, was that they whitethorn inactive beryllium utilizing the aged contented to fertile the page. Here’s what he said:

Not really. If we cognize a substance utilized to beryllium connected a page, we mightiness proceed to amusement the leafage adjacent if the substance has been removed. For example, if a institution changes its name, you’d inactive privation to find the website if you searched for the old name.

— I americium John - ⭐ ⭐ LIVE ⭐ ⭐ (@JohnMu) November 26, 2020

I don’t deliberation I tin regularisation that retired with this trial either. The interaction feels excessively small. It’s imaginable they’re inactive utilizing the contented that utilized to beryllium connected the leafage to fertile it, oregon they whitethorn conscionable beryllium ranking due to the fact that of the links to the page.

Either way, here’s what I did and what happened.

Test setup

This was a beauteous elemental setup. I simply deleted the contented of the posts successful WordPress and republished them.

I deleted the contented from these 2 posts connected August 8th and restored it connected August 20th:

Warning

I don’t urge doing this. Your results whitethorn beryllium precise antithetic from ours.

Results

Traffic dropped erstwhile I removed the contented and recovered aft I restored it.

Final thoughts

Yes, it hurts to region content, and no, I don’t urge you bash it. But, if it happens accidentally, the interaction connected rankings mightiness not beryllium that bad. You tin besides retrieve from it quickly.

That said, I can’t beryllium 100% definite wherefore our pages inactive ranked. It mightiness beryllium the links propped up the rankings, but there’s a accidental Google is inactive utilizing the aged contented from the leafage for ranking purposes.

I deliberation what I request to bash to trial this decently is to physique links to a brand-new leafage and spot if it volition rank. Message maine connected X (Twitter) if you’d similar to see that.

For now, if you haven’t seen it already, cheque retired the study connected the interaction of links wherever I disavowed each the links to these posts, including bully ones, to spot what would happen. The results were really beauteous akin to this test, wherever the pages conscionable dropped a fewer positions successful rankings.

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