Decision tree
Refresh or prune an old blog post: the questions in order
Run each post through six questions, the way a content audit with backlinks should, top to bottom. The first question that fires gives the verdict, so most posts need under two minutes.
You need three numbers per URL: referring domains, sessions over 90 days from Search Console, and the date of the last real edit. A content audit with backlinks starts with the lookup in the field reference.
The six questions
- 1
1. Does the page have 16 or more referring domains?
If yes, stop. This is a protected page. You may refresh it, but you never delete it, change the URL or fold it into another post without a redirect.
- 2
2. Do any of those linkers have a high Domain Rating?
One link from a site rated in the 70s outweighs a dozen from rating-5 directories. Treat the page as protected even with a low count.
- 3
3. Is traffic still above your floor?
If sessions hold, leave the post alone and add three internal links from newer pieces. Editing a page that works is how editors break it.
- 4
4. Is the topic still one your site should own?
If the subject is off-strategy, merge the useful parts into a stronger post and 301 the old URL. Links follow the redirect, more or less.
- 5
5. Does a better post on your own site already cover it?
Then the old one competes with it. Merge, redirect, and update the anchors you control inside the site.
- 6
6. None of the above?
Zero or near-zero links, falling traffic, no strategic role. Prune it. A 410 or a redirect to the nearest category page is fine.
The same tree as a lookup
| What you see | Verdict | What to keep |
|---|---|---|
| 16+ referring domains, any traffic | Protect and refresh | URL, title anchor words, intro claim |
| 3 to 15 domains, falling traffic | Refresh | URL and the sentence people quoted |
| 3 to 15 domains, topic off-strategy | Merge and 301 | Whole-page redirect to the target |
| 0 to 2 domains, rising traffic | Leave alone | Add internal links only |
| 0 to 2 domains, falling traffic, covered elsewhere | Merge and 301 | Any unique data point |
| 0 to 2 domains, falling, no role | Prune | Nothing |
Where the tree is weak
It reads no quality, and the severity table shares that blind spot. A post can hold 20 links and still be wrong about a 2024 law, and the tree will tell you to protect it. Protect the URL, then fix the facts.
Link data also lags. Our index refreshes roughly once a month, so a citation won in the last few weeks may be missing and a link that was removed may still show. For a page you are about to delete, re-check in Search Console under Links before you pull the trigger.
Traffic floors matter. A site with 400 sessions a month in total needs a very different floor from one with 400,000, and a rating that looks small on a big site can be large on yours. Pick the floor by looking at your own median post.
Google updates add noise. After the March 2024 core update and the August 2025 spam update many editors saw falling traffic on posts that had done nothing wrong. Falling traffic is a prompt to look, not a verdict. Compare against the whole section before you blame one URL.
Last, a note on redirects. Moving a page and keeping its links is never a guarantee, so the tree prefers refreshing in place whenever the page has real citations. Fewer moving parts means fewer ways to lose something.
Before any prune goes live
- Referring domains pulled for the exact URL and for its old variants (http, www, trailing slash)
- Redirect target chosen on topic, not on convenience
- Internal links to the old URL rewritten
- Sitemap entry removed or updated
- A dated note in the audit sheet saying why