Deleting Posts = Boost?

[emerge]

Sorry for the clickbait title

I have a rather large site that has around 200 posts. I am wondering, how do I audit this and delete the non-performant? Around 30-40 posts are getting decent traffic.

Should I run a report in SC and remove anything with less than X amount of impressions/clicks?

Thanks!

 

[convbelt]

Not sure about deleting.
In your lab thread, @Ryuzaki wrote '[my site has] the same number of posts (actually less, probably about 30 less since I just published a batch that isn't earning yet).'
In this same thread, I see you published 100 posts in October and 72 in September. That's 172 out of your 200 posts that have been online for just 5 months (and your site is 6 months old).
Have you checked if your posts shown as 'indexed' in GSC?

 

[Ryuzaki]

I agree with @convbelt if his assessment of your timeline is correct. It's too early to be thinking about deleting posts. 200 minus 172 = 28. Three's your 30 posts getting traffic (the older ones). The new ones need time still.

But what I always want to say in these conversations is that just because an article isn't performing doesn't mean it's not high quality. Deleting low quality articles is the point of this in order to lift your Panda quality score.

Quality isn't gauged by how much traffic the posts get. There can be a lot of reasons a post isn't receiving traffic that has nothing to do with quality. It could need time, need links, be optimized for keywords that are too competitive for now, maybe not optimized for any keywords.

An example would be a link bait piece of content. It could be super high quality with interactive charts and graphs and may have received links from 100 referring domains. That very same post may get zero traffic because it's not optimized for any keywords that exist because it's a new idea or new conclusion based on whatever data you wrangled together. You wouldn't delete a page with 100 referring domains.

You know whether or not you published a bunch of trash. I know on my side I don't click publish until and unless it's a worthwhile piece of content. But in the past I have published trash and deleted it. We had a big thread about it here if you want more insight: Content Pruning - Did You See an Increase in SERP Visibility?