Prop­erly deal­ing with expired con­tent is impor­tant. I have a few clients who reg­u­larly update their web­site and remove con­tent that is dated or obso­lete.  Usu­ally I notice the con­tent is miss­ing and send them an email along the lines of “never remove con­tent!” along with some expla­na­tion. But is just keeps hap­pen­ing, and it is hurt­ing their vis­i­tors expe­ri­ence and their web­site’s search engine ranking.

The con­cern with remov­ing expired con­tent, or not remov­ing it, is that  vis­i­tors will con­tinue to come to your web­site, directed by search engines and out­side links, and will not find what they are look­ing for.  Either what they wanted is miss­ing, or it is old and out of date.  You have just made a bad impres­sion.  Fur­ther, search engines are in the busi­ness of direct­ing vis­i­tors to use­ful con­tent.  If they detect that send­ing vis­i­tors your way isn’t help­ful they will rank you lower in their search results.  Search engines want the pages and con­tent they think you have to be sta­ble and reli­able. So what to do? (more…)