by: AskPat 871 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and thank you so much for joining me in Episode 871 of AskPat. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.
We have an awesome question coming in today from Justin, but before we get to that, I just want to mention really quick, starting June 5th—that's in a couple weeks from now—I'm opening up enrollment for my course, Smart From Scratch, again. It's been closed for about a couple months now. I've been working with a group of students who've been going in there to walk them through the beginning stages of finding their business idea and actually implementing it. And so, if you already have a business that's up and running, don't worry about this promo, but I am opening enrollment for Smart From Scratch for those of you who are just starting from the beginning, who want to do it right, who want to even maybe get to the point where you already have a set of customers for an idea that you have.
So, all you have to do to sign up for the wait list and to get open enrollment on the 5th of June is go to SmartfromScratch.com. Again, that's SmartFromScratch.com and this is your last chance to get it at the current price point. I will be raising the price the next time it's open, and that's later in the year, but for right now get it while it's hot, SmartFromScratch.com.
Really quick, I'd like to thank today's sponsor, which is Vistaprint, which you may have heard of before. I've used it many times, both for personal and business-related things such as custom business cards, invitations, banners, apparel—all those kinds of things. The amazing customer service and design services from Vistaprint are unmatched and they will help you get the perfect products for your business. They guarantee you'll love it, or they will make it right. It's really cool, you could personalize it with any kinds of products, with whatever you want. I mean, seriously, check it out. And actually you can get 500 custom business cards for $9.99, which is a 50 percent savings over the regular site pricing. So, here's what you do to save 50 percent on your business cards: Go to Vistaprint.com, design your custom business cards, and enter the code “Pat” at checkout—that's “Pat”—to get 500 custom business cards for only $9.99, check it out.
All right, now here's today's question, coming in from Justin.
Justin: Hey, Pat, this is Justin Mendes from LogicalHarmony.net, huge fan of yours. I mean, man, it's changing everything that we're doing and so thank you, thank you so much. This is my second time asking a question and totally different question this time. What I'm wondering is, well, we're doing a content audit and I'm wondering where should I draw the line on a piece of content to be deleted? Is it, you know, if it's only received a hundred views in the last twelve months, 200, 300, 400. Where do I draw the line without removing a piece of content that could be really, really valuable and taking people off the site, even if I'm redirecting them to something I think is relevant. I can't do that for everything. Anyway, thanks so much Pat, appreciate everything you do. Hope to talk to you soon, bye-bye.
Pat Flynn: Hey, Justin, thanks so much for this question and for those of you who are wondering about this thing called a content audit, it's essentially a way for you to go back into your archive and change things around to make your website even tighter—by deleting content that's irrelevant, by redirecting content, like Justin was saying, to more relevant or more updated pieces of content. It also involves combining different pieces of content that may be talking about a similar topic, into one bigger epic post and then redirecting those older ones or those non-epic ones to the bigger, more recent one. And then it also involves just tightening up the categories and tags and all those kinds of things. This comes from Episode 200 of The Smart Passive Income Podcast with Todd Tressider. This title says it all. He deleted a third of his content and tripled his traffic. That's the title of the episode: “How Todd Tressider Deleted a Third of His Content and Tripled His Traffic.” And so, if you go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/session200. Again, that's SmartPassiveIncome.com/session200 you'll hear the exact step by step process there.
It's not easy to do, Justin, as I'm sure you're finding out, but it is very, very useful. Most people do this because they're tightening up their website; it tightens it up for not just Google and search engine rankings and climbing higher there, but also for humans that are on your website, right? Because your blog is no longer a first draft. You've kind of gone through a round of edits and now are showing your best stuff.
So, to your question, Justin. Where do you draw the line on a piece of content, meaning when's it gonna be deleted? You know, I look at a couple things. One, if it's not at all related to anything on my website and it just doesn't get any more traffic. If it's getting any sort of traffic at all, above five visits a month, I redirect it, if it's something that I'm thinking of changing. If it's less than five visits a month, that just shows that people are randomly finding it, and what I mean by visits is coming from Google. If it's from another place on your website, then you might want to consider redirecting it anyway. But, deleting it is essentially your last option. I've deleted about 40 articles on my website. Things that were written in the past and actually a lot of them were pages, like, secondary and tertiary thank you pages, or just placeholder pages that I had that were up and running that were getting zero traffic. Just delete those. Nobody's seeing them, Google's not seeing them, or maybe they are but it just doesn't add any relevance to what's happening on your website. Go ahead and delete those. That's where I would draw the line. Most of the stuff you're going to do will either be combined and/or redirected. I think that combining things is actually where the most power can come from. I'm actually doing that right now on my website, combining information about affiliate marketing onto one page or combining stuff about other kinds of topics and just kind of pointing them all into one direction. And that's how you want to approach it. Wherever people end up, if that's the best information, that's where Google's ending up and that's the best information that they're going to share and put in the rankings.
So, Justin, kind of simple, but I know also very difficult in terms of deleting. If it's getting any traffic I would look to redirect it to better places, but if you're not getting any traffic at all, then yeah, that's where I would draw the line, personally. And I know it can be hard. Sometimes you just don't want to delete content because it's great, but if nobody's seeing it and it's not relevant … I mean, you could have a lot of things on your website that nobody's seen and it's still relevant. If it's still relevant and not getting any traffic, well, you have to ask yourself, “Well, how can I get traffic to this?” Right? But if it's not relevant and not getting any traffic then delete it. And that's where you go from there.
Justin, thank you so much for the question. I appreciate it; I look forward to hearing how this works out for you and I want to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show, just like I do with everybody whose question gets featured here on the show. So if you have a question and you want to ask it and you want to maybe get a t-shirt too, all you have to do is go to AskPat.com and just hit the record button, right there on that page.
If you want to ask me a question live, sometimes I'm available every Friday, 1:30 p.m. Pacific on Facebook. That's Facebook.com/smartpassiveincome. That's called AskPat Live, it's one of my favorite things to do. I give away some things there too. Not a shirt to everybody's question who gets their question answered, because we answer a lot of them there, but I do some giveaways and some fun things for people who are online or watching the replays on Facebook. So again, that's Facebook.com/smartpassiveincome and then finally, for those of you just starting out in your business journey, if you want to do it the right way, with me and a group of other people, all you have to do is go to SmartFromScratch.com. You can check it out there and again the price is going up the next time we open it, but this time it's going to stay at the $197 price. I look forward to serving you there. Check it out, SmartFromScratch.com and here's a quote, which is an anonymous quote, and actually I really love this one, and that is, “Good judgment comes from experience and experience, well, that comes from poor judgment.” Awesome.
All right, take care and I'll see you on the next episode of AskPat. Bye.