What are dead pages?
Dead pages are also referred to as pages that are generally no longer correctly recorded by search engines and continue to fall in the rankings. The reason for this is that the respective websites are no longer updated and the search engine crawler has downgraded the pages so much that at some point they can no longer be found. Site operators should ensure that a site is constantly updated and supplied with new content. A website is considered dead if it has not been updated for over a year. Once a website is one of the untraceable dead pages, it is very difficult to index it again.
Why is timeliness so important for search engines?
A website is only constantly visited and updated by the search engine crawler if there are regular updates and changes to the website itself. If a page is no longer updated and outdated information remains, this can have a very negative effect on the ranking of a page. The pages are visited less and less frequently by the crawler and if no changes are made over a longer period of time, the page will eventually no longer appear in the natural and organic search results. This situation is often a disaster for many website operators, as many websites depend on organic traffic from search engines and often have to capitulate if they can no longer attract visitors.
How can dead pages be brought back to life?
If a page has not been updated for over a year, it is initially difficult to bring it back to life. However, with up-to-date content and regular updates, any page can be picked up by the crawler again and flushed into the search results. Articles, new products and new subpages that are immediately recognized by Google are also suitable for this.
How can a dead page be prevented?
To avoid losing relevance in search engines, it is advisable to keep content as up-to-date as possible. Site operators should always check in short sections whether information is still up-to-date, links are still accessible and images are still visible. If no urgent changes are necessary, style and design updates can also be made to show search engines that there is some activity on the site. It should also be ensured that all functions of the site are fully intact. If there are frequent problems or bugs on a site and these are not rectified over a longer period of time, this can also mean that a site is slowly but surely dying out for search engines.
When is a page considered a dead page?
Pages lose relevance and mutate into a dead page if no changes have been made over a longer period of time. One year is often used as a guideline. However, in order to keep a page visible, it should be revised again and again in short sections. Site operators should prevent Google’s search engine crawler from negatively evaluating the up-to-dateness of the site, as this very quickly becomes noticeable in the traffic.
How can content be kept up to date?
To keep content up-to-date and relevant for Google, even small changes and updates can suffice. Changing links, replacing images and adding smaller texts can be enough to protect a page from dying out.
