The idea for this post was spawned from spending some time this morning looking at my old posts. I say old I’m only into my second month, but posts from early November late October.

The reason I was looking at my old post was to continue to use them to draw new readers and to recycle the work I have put in. There was a third reason too. I wanted to re-read and edit my grammar, as I’m going back to school to improve my content.

Purging is the mass deletion of your old posts that some consider dead wood in order to keep your site lean, but is it a good idea?

  • Lean

The more you write the better you get. My writing style has changed even in the past 6 weeks the site has been live, I think it has changed for the better and when I look at my old posts I think could I do without this post, as it’s buried deep under really popular posts. The very first posts, don’t have many tweets or comments and compared to the front page posts, only receive a fraction of daily readers.

Should I delete it? NO! This is a marathon not a sprint and as such you need fat to burn in reserves. The more content you have the better, although there are exceptions.

  • Meat

You can’t make a stew without meat and vegetables, your old posts could suddenly become interesting to your readers. A quick google search reveals a post you have written and forgotten about. That search is done by a very popular social media user and decided to spread the post to their friends and bam…. Old content becomes front page most popular post!

  • Service

Instead of deleting the post, you can service it by editing and updating. Delete the non relevant outdated parts and spruce it up with new and fresh content that re-enforces your original point.

purge

There is never a need to purge your site, but back to the point I made about the more content the better. Make sure it’s relevant, quality content with your readers in mind, don’t blind post.

What does everyone think?

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