The other day, we reported that Gary Illyes from Google said that pruning content was not safe so I asked him about it at SMX East yesterday. Gary did say you could use this tactic in the past, back in 2015.
In short, Gary said he joined Google around the time Panda launched. From everything he remembers back then and through today, pruning and removing content from your site should have never helped you recover from a Panda penalty (or filter as he likes to call it).
The funny thing is, most SEOs I know spend a heck of a lot of time pruning content on sites. They often will take a massive site and cut it down to be a fraction of the size, which would then help boost the quality of the pages that remain because they would often drop out the low quality pages and keep the quality pages. Someone that meant migrating pages into one, boosting the depth of content on those pages.
Since the early days of Panda, in 2011, SEOs would remove content from their sites to get out of the Panda's paws. But to be fair, Gary Illyes from Google did say in 2015 that you improve content, not remove it for Panda.
Here is one of the tweets from the panel:
Pruning low-quality content will never work for Panda, according to @methode, if you've been "Pandalyzed"! #smx #smxeast pic.twitter.com/U6Bqvy1dM3
— Chris Silver Smith (@si1very) October 26, 2017
Again, it is funny to hear Gary tell SEOs what they've been doing for years isn't how it works.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
