Your Content Might Need a Machete, Not a Megaphone

The internet is groaning under the weight of it all, buried in content nobody reads, nobody remembers, and nobody cares about.

But they keep writing. Somewhere along the way, someone decided that more content was always better. More pages meant more traffic, more authority, more leads, more… something.

Except it doesn’t. Not anymore. Not for a long time.

Google’s Not Impressed by Your Blog Bloat

Google’s got wise to the game. Search engines aren’t mindless vacuum cleaners sucking up every word and rewarding quantity over quality. If anything, they’re the opposite now.

The more useless, low-value, repetitive, keyword-stuffed nonsense you churn out, the less chance you have of actually ranking for anything that matters. And yet, most brands still seem to be stuck in 2012, pumping out another forgettable blog post on engagement strategies for Q2 or some other such nonsense.

Here’s the truth: the best thing you can do for your website’s traffic isn’t writing more content. It’s deleting and/or refining it. Not all of it. Just the bad bits. The old posts no one ever visits. The ones that made sense when you had to write a new blog post every week because that’s what you do. The ones that repeat the same ideas, just slightly reworded, because someone somewhere read that you should have a page for every keyword variation under the sun. Get rid of them. Kill your darlings. And kill the ones you never loved in the first place.

What is Content Pruning?

SEO experts have a term for this: content pruning. It’s the art of stepping back, looking at your site, and realising half of it is doing nothing for you. Worse than nothing, actually – because Google is still crawling all of it, wasting precious resources trying to index your drivel when it could be focusing on the handful of pages that actually matter.

When you cut the dead weight, something strange happens. The good stuff starts to perform better. Your remaining pages become stronger, more authoritative. Google sees a streamlined, focused site rather than a bloated mess of outdated blog posts and duplicated topics. Your rankings improve. Your conversions improve. Your site visitors don’t have to wade through 600 variations of How to Improve Your SEO in 2025 to find what they actually need. Everybody wins.

And it’s not just theory. Case studies show that pruning content can have a measurable impact on organic search performance. Some studies have found that removing outdated or redundant content led to organic traffic increases of 60% within six months. That’s not some vague promise about better engagement – that’s real, tangible results from hitting delete instead of publish. Of course, the problem is that deleting content goes against every instinct in the marketing world.

The Ego Problem: Why People Struggle to Delete Bad Content

Agencies want more to show clients. Clients want more to justify their budgets. Writers want more because that’s how they prove they’re working. No one wants to believe that the best thing they can do for their SEO strategy is to hit the delete button and walk away. But that’s the state of things now.

Furthermore, it can be quite a blow to someone’s ego to find out that their content hasn’t worked. But you have to just suck it up.

It’s like spending weeks baking what you think is a masterpiece of a cake – layers, intricate frosting, the works – only to watch people take one bite, grimace, and push their plates away. It stings. But instead of insisting everyone’s wrong and forcing more slices on them, you’d be better off admitting it’s too dry, scraping it into the bin, and learning how to bake something actually worth eating.

The reality is that Google doesn’t reward sites for volume anymore—it rewards helpfulness. That’s why Google’s Helpful Content Update specifically targets websites that produce “unhelpful, thin, or low-value content” in bulk. If your blog is stuffed with useless, repetitive junk just to tick the “fresh content” box, it’s not helping you – it’s actively hurting you.

But let’s talk about the deeper reason why content bloat exists. It’s not just a misunderstanding of SEO – it’s an industry-wide addiction to output.
Agencies have built entire workflows around KPIs that encourage relentless content production. Writers are paid per word, per post, per hour spent churning out fluff. Clients equate “busy” with “effective” and want to see proof that their retainer is being used.

And let’s not even get started on the Frankenstein’s monster that is AI-generated content – an endless, soulless stream of articles built to look like information but functionally as empty as a promise from Micheál Martin.

So what’s the solution? You don’t just delete content blindly. You approach it strategically. Here’s how:

1. Audit your existing content. Identify underperforming pages. If a page hasn’t had meaningful traffic in the last year, it’s considered for the chopping block.
2. Look for keyword cannibalisation. If multiple pages are competing for the same topic, consolidate them into one stronger, better resource.
3. Check backlinks. If an old page still has valuable inbound links, don’t just delete it—redirect it to a more relevant, high-performing page.
4. Update or delete? If a post is outdated but still valuable, refresh it with new insights rather than scrapping it entirely.
5. Track the impact. Measure rankings, traffic, and engagement before and after pruning to see the SEO boost in action.

Less Content, More Quality

And while you’re at it, consider reducing your content production. Yes, you read that right. Instead of mindlessly publishing a blog post every week to hit some imaginary quota, slow down. Focus on quality over quantity. Think of content like a craft beer, not a mass-produced lager – better ingredients, more care, and none of the watered-down nonsense. When every article is written because it has something real to say, rather than because someone set a deadline, it stands a better chance of actually making an impact.

The truth is, most brands don’t need a hundred blog posts a year. They just need really good ones. Solid, well-researched, engaging, evergreen pieces will outperform a warehouse full of disposable junk every single time.

Fewer posts mean more attention per piece, more time to promote and refine, and more value to the reader. And isn’t that the point? Or are we all just content machines now, spinning out words for the sake of it?

If your blog is a graveyard of forgotten content, do yourself a favour. Take a machete to it. Cut it down, merge the leftovers, and consolidate the good bits into something that’s actually useful.

Then do something no one does anymore: leave it alone. Let it breathe. Let it rank. Let it do its job. Because nobody – not Google, not your customers, not even your own content team – needs another tired article about why content is king.

If you don’t start burying the worst of it, your rankings might suffer. But hey, at least you’ll have another useless blog post to add to the pile.

And in six months, you’ll probably delete that, too.

If your content is underperforming and you want a content strategy that works for you, then get in touch with us today.