Content Pruning During a Migration
Decide what to keep, rewrite, merge, redirect or retire without turning cleanup into indiscriminate content deletion.
Thin does not always mean useless
A short page can still serve a specific customer question or hold valuable links. Evaluate purpose, performance and uniqueness before judging by word count alone.
Merge overlapping pages deliberately
When several legacy posts answer the same intent poorly, combine their useful material into one stronger page and map each old URL to that destination.
Retire expired information
Old promotions, obsolete staff bios, broken event announcements and duplicate system pages can usually go. Document the decision so they are not accidentally restored from an old backup later.
Preserve historical value where appropriate
Some old articles, reports or project pages are worth retaining as archives even when they are no longer commercially important. A migration can separate archive value from main-navigation priority.
Update links as part of pruning
When pages are merged or retired, update internal links to point directly to the surviving destination rather than relying on redirects forever.
Use evidence beyond traffic
Low traffic does not always mean low value. A policy page, specialized service explanation, old case study or niche route page may be important to a small number of valuable visitors. Consider conversions, backlinks, customer-service value and legal or historical usefulness alongside analytics volume.
Write the destination before deleting the source
For every page marked merge or retire, decide what should happen to a visitor arriving at the old URL. If another page genuinely replaces it, record the redirect. If no replacement exists, allow a clean retirement. Making this decision while the old content is still visible is much easier than reconstructing intent after deletion.