If you’re looking for a way to optimize your site for technical SEO and rank better, consider deleting your pages.
I know, crazy, right? But hear me out.
We all know Google can be slow to index content, especially on new websites. But occasionally, it can aggressively index anything and everything it can get its robot hands on whether you want it or not. This can cause terrible headaches, hours of clean up, and subsequent maintenance, especially on large sites and/or ecommerce sites.
Our job as search engine optimization experts is to make sure Google and other search engines can first find our content so that they can then understand it, index it, and rank it appropriately. When we have an excess of indexed pages, we are not being clear with how we want search engines to treat our pages. As a result, they take whatever action they deem best which sometimes translates to indexing more pages than needed.
Before you know it, you’re dealing with index bloat.
What is the index bloat?
Put simply, index bloat is when you have too many low-quality pages on your site indexed in search engines. Similar to bloating in the human digestive system (disclaimer: I’m not a doctor), the result of processing this excess content can be seen in search engines indices when their information retrieval process becomes less efficient.
Index bloat can even make your life difficult without you knowing it. In this puffy and uncomfortable situation, Google has to go through much more content than necessary (most of the times low-quality and internal duplicate content[1]) before they can get to the pages you want them to index.
Think of it this way: Google visits