Having a business on the internet is a pretty big deal, and your reputation can either soar or plummet. The stakes are high when you know someone else could be damaging your brand image by posting fake news, negative propaganda, hate speech, and other forms of information to push your customers away.

All they have to do is influence web results and voila.  Then, there are problems that older blogs and e-commerce businesses frequently run into, such as outdated information from yesteryear cropping up unexpectedly onto search engine results.

As customers click on the promising link, it only leads to disappointment as they find out the information is either factually incorrect or isn’t useful anymore (such as specs about an old product that has been discontinued).

It can be tempting to keep these pages to increase your chances of securing another lead, but there are over a million different things you can do to increase your search engine ranking and keeping a vault of outdated information isn’t one of them.

In fact, in some cases, keeping outdated information could even prove to be a legal issue if it ends up misleading someone.  

Sometimes, it is tempting to keep pages that are doing exceptionally well from a purely SEO point of view, but at the risk of disappointing the user base because the content offers redundant information.

The resulting customer dissatisfaction will turn to negative reviews that will adversely impact your online ranking.

Here’s the deal: if people are unable to connect with the online content, they would not buy the business’s products or services.

There are also instances when a business decides to move out from their base of operations or branch out to a new location. This also means that their contact details will have to be updated to reflect the new developments.

It is entirely possible that while your website’s SEO was relevant a few years ago, it is no longer the case since Google and other search engines have completely changed their algorithms.

All of the above are valid suggestions that online business owners should think about frequently, regardless of their business structure. As is the case with online content, your website can almost always benefit from a complete content restructuring by replacing the old with the new.

It could also be possible that the older content is delivering your message the way you intend for it to be represented, which means it shouldn’t be changed. Depending on how big your website is, it can be challenging to figure out when it is time to remove older content and swap it with newer blogs.

Below are six reasons you should remove older content, both the ones under your control and those managed by others. In the case of the latter, you might need online reputation management services to perform a more thorough clean-up operation.  

What other people say about you can have far reaching consequences, whether you’re a business or an individual. In fact, a single negative review has enough clout to invalidate 10 positive ones.

This makes it incredibly easy to tarnish someone else’s reputation by simply churning out negative and factually incorrect information.

This is illegal, and unless you take prompt action, your potential customer base would leave. Most people simply don’t have the time to fact check every single little review they come across on the internet, and chances are that they will go with the popular opinion or what the front page of the internet has to say. Fact checking is not everyone’s cup of tea.

This is why it helps to treat negative, factually incorrect reviews with a sense of urgency when it comes to your brand’s online reputation.

For starters, you will have to do a thorough search of the internet by spending time going through website services such as Google reviews, Trip Advisor, and Yelp. In the case of online retailers that sell physical items, they will have to look for Amazon, eBay, and similar websites where customers can easily drop in negative reviews.

When it comes to your own brand’s online reputation, the onus of taking care of it and cleaning it up is entirely up to you. It is not uncommon for businesses to ask online reputation management services to do it for them with impressive results, which is what we also recommend. These specialists will scour the internet using special tools to create more positive information about you.

A 2010 study by Cross Tab Market Research and Microsoft found that 70 percent of job recruiters in the US rejected candidates based on their online reputation, while only 7 percent of Americans believed that their bad online reputation had ruined their career prospects.

While it definitely makes sense to leave discontinued products for a while, consider removing the page if the product has been discontinued permanently.

After a certain period of time, you should consider using 301-redirect to divert traffic from the old page to the new one.

Yes nostalgia can be a very good marketing gimmick, and many corporations are still cashing in on the nostalgia factor of their products and services, case in point Nintendo.

However, nothing disappoints more than an advertisement for a product that has been discontinued product over 20 years ago.

In the case of e-commerce businesses, where this is frequently the case, it is tempting to keep outdated information to continue generating traffic. This ultimately results in poor user experience because too many people will click back to search results and feed Google’s algorithms with undesirable engagement metrics that could harm your website’s rankings and end up costing you more than the damage you anticipate might occur by removing the webpage.

Websites change their business models all the time without realising they have to similarly overhaul the content to facilitate those changes. If leads come to your site and come across outdated information about what your company used to offer, they will do one of two things:

Whichever way you put it, your website visitor will probably not contact you in the future.

The lesson learnt here is that if you have changed your products and services, make it a point to remove the outdated content and replace it with relevant information.

It is important to consult with an online reputation management consultant to help you make suitable adjustments to your outdated content.  

Publishing information on treatments and medical conditions automatically means you have committed to staying on top of the latest news related to that information.

Suppose a user visits your website to gain insights about a certain treatment or disease they or their loved one might have, and the content still has citations dating back decades ago about an experimental breakthrough that could potentially cure the disease.

This gets them excited and they tell their doctor about it (which is the right way to go about online medical information anyway), only to be told that the information has been busted long ago.

This person will never trust your website again, and worst case scenario, it will leave you vulnerable to potential lawsuits because your website contained factually incorrect medical information.

The above scenario is just one instance of the potential ramifications that outdated content brings to the table, making your website open to attack from government bodies, watchdog groups, and opportunistic people.

The best thing you can do with outdated information on  sensitive  topics is to replace them with new studies and an updated database of knowledge.

As is true for medical information, you have to be absolutely accurate about financial information, especially if you offer advice on how people should invest or handle their wealth.

If your website contains information 10-year-old financial projections and how to reach them, you should definitely get rid of that information or update it entirely.

The general rule of thumb is that the general public shouldn’t gain access to financial information published 3 years ago, unless they specifically chose to opt into something like that. It is entirely possible that someone takes you up on your word, trusts you, and then when things fall apart, puts the entire blame on you.

This can hurt the brand’s online reputation even if had disclaimers in place, because people will start believing that you habitually offer wrong advice.

If you still keep information on your website about a physical address that you sold out five years ago, isn’t it time you moved on and got rid of them?

Such outdated information really doesn’t add anything of value to your business, and it doesn’t really improve your online visibility either. Outdated contact information is a liability that probably leads back to a competitor you sold the place to long ago.

This also results in a negative overall experience for the visitor if they are unaware that you moved your digital and physical addresses long ago. It is entirely possible that they might make a trip to the physical address, only to find out someone else’s logo and do business with them instead. This way, you just gave up traffic to your competitors for free!

It is time to redirect and update those web pages with relevant, useful information.

The same rule applies if you have recently migrated to a new website. If several months have passed and you still mention your old website name, you should honestly consider moving on and putting the old domain to rest.

It is common for businesses to rebrand every now and then and it is a part of their lifecycle, but a lot of them forget to remove mentions of the old brand and keep it for longer than they should.

The general rule of thumb for mentions about older brands is that they shouldn’t be kept for longer than a year after you’ve changed them.

It is relatively easy to control content for profiles that directly belong to you, and this includes your social media handles for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and even some review sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor. In the case of review sites, you might be able to remove reviews that are in blatant violation of the company’s guidelines.

Depending on the situation, you might have to enlist help from professional online reputation management consultants to get rid of the negative content. In the case of blogs and websites that you do not own, it could be worth your while to contact the webmaster via their contact details and resolve the situation to a solution that you both agree.

Finally, you should update, remove, and revise outdated content on your website in consultation with your online reputation management consultant who will help you come up with innovative solutions to maintain your SEO rankings.

If you need help with the above you can contact us  here