Deleting 60 thin pages raised sitewide impressions 22%

Deleting 60 thin pages raised sitewide impressions 22%

A content site had 60 pages each targeting a sub-100-volume query with 300 words apiece. We consolidated them into 9 hubs.

— Pages pruned: 60
— Avg volume per pruned page: ▇ 70/mo
— Hubs built: 9
— Sitewide impressions, 90 days later: +22%

We 301-redirected each thin page to its parent hub and merged the unique paragraphs. No content was lost, just relocated.

The nine hubs out-ranked the old thin pages and lifted unrelated pages too, the classic crawl-efficiency effect.

So what: many low-volume pages dilute more than they earn. Consolidation concentrates relevance signals.

Benchmark of the week: sites with 30%+ of pages under 100 vol saw a median 18% impression lift after pruning, across 25 audits.