What are the best practices for archiving and deleting content in a CMS?

When it comes to archiving and deleting content in a Content Management System (CMS), it's essential to follow best practices to ensure efficiency, organization, and data integrity. Here are some recommended practices: Content Audit: Conduct a regular content audit to assess the value, relevance, and performance of each piece of content. Define Archiving and Deletion Policies: Establish clear policies outlining when content should be archived or deleted. Backup and Recovery: Before performing any archiving or deletion, create a complete backup of the CMS database and relevant files. This precautionary step ensures that content can be recovered if needed.

A cluttered CMS is like a cluttered mind. Archiving and deleting content that is no longer doing its job or staying relevant, no matter how dear to you it may be, is a recipe for confusion. It makes it hard to find the content that is important, it perplexes your users, and it makes your job difficult. It's critical to get rid of the old in order to leave space for what's going to actually help you meet your goals.

Absolutely, archiving or deleting content is integral for maintaining a streamlined and effective content strategy. It optimizes the performance and security of your CMS by reducing load and risk. Enhancing user experience by decluttering and removing outdated content contributes to a more user-friendly environment. From an SEO perspective, avoiding duplicate or low-quality content safeguards your rankings and authority. Regularly reviewing and updating content through archiving or deletion ensures ongoing quality and relevance. This process not only supports content governance but also simplifies the content workflow, aligning your digital presence with evolving goals and audience expectations.

A simple example: I started a insta page with a brand name, ABC: A t-shirt brand After 2 yrs building it up, I realized, shoes brands have high potential than Tshirts. Now I have 100,000 followers interested in Tshirts. If I am able to pivot my brand to Shoes, but I keep 2-3 yrs old content intact, as a new follower, it becomes confusing to co-relate. Hence, during this pivoting journey, I will start eliminating the un-necessary content from the picture

Treating archiving or deleting content as a continuous process is key. Conduct audits using tools like analytics, surveys, and feedback to gauge effectiveness and user satisfaction. Categorize content into keep, update, archive, or delete based on audit results. Utilize CMS capabilities to archive or delete manually or automatically, ensuring backup and testing for site functionality and SEO. Regularly monitor archived or deleted content, considering restoration or permanent deletion as needed. Analyze the impact on site performance, user experience, and SEO, making adjustments for ongoing content optimization.

Many common practices contribute to deleting and archiving data: for SEO purposes, avoiding broken links, increasing performance… But the ultimate question comes when you need to choose which content to delete and when. Here, I believe it depends on your content strategy goal and governance. However, here are common Indicators that can help you out: - Outdated content - Duplicate information/articles - Older content that is no longer relevant - Content that is not receiving the desired engagement - Articles that do not fit your niche anymore You can create a checklist and go over it every quarter, to ascertain what content you need to archive or delete. Pro tip: sometimes you need to edit, not everything needs to be deleted.

Indeed, archiving and deleting content in a CMS requires a strategic approach. Define clear policies and guidelines for these processes, incorporating metadata and tags for efficient organization. Implement 301 redirects to prevent broken links and maintain a seamless user experience. Regularly evaluate the outcomes through analytics, reports, and surveys to gauge site performance, user experience, and SEO impact. By following these best practices, you not only effectively manage your content but also enhance site quality, usability, and visibility over time.

Consider creating a content governance plan to ensure a systematic and sustainable approach to content archiving and deletion. This plan should outline roles, responsibilities, and processes for ongoing content management, helping maintain consistency, quality, and relevance across your digital presence. Regularly revisit and update this plan to align with evolving goals and industry trends, ensuring your content governance remains an adaptive and effective framework.