Prune and consolidate old content

A content pruning audit starts with a complete list of your pages and the numbers that show what each page is worth to you. Kite builds that list from the source that knows your site best. On a website Kite hosts, it manages the code, so it already knows every page. For a site on Webflow or self-hosted WordPress, it lists the posts and collection items through your connected account.

Kite then gathers the evidence for each page:

• Search performance. Clicks, impressions, average position, and the searches each page appears for, from Google Search Console. Without a Search Console connection, Kite uses its built-in ranking data to see which of your pages rank and for which keywords.
• Visits and conversions. Page views and the signups, form submissions, or other conversions each page contributes, from Kite's built-in analytics on a site it hosts or from your connected Google Analytics.
• Backlinks. How many other websites link to each page, and how strong those sites are, from your connected Ahrefs or Semrush account.
• Citations in AI answers. Whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or Claude cite the page when they answer the questions Kite tracks for your business.
• What the page says. Kite reads each page to judge whether it is still accurate, whether it is thin, and whether it covers the same topic as other pages on your site.

The result is one table with a row for every page, which is the foundation for every decision that follows.

Not automatically. A post with no traffic is a candidate for removal, but Kite only recommends deleting it after checking for the reasons to keep it. Those reasons are backlinks from other sites, conversions that the post still drives, citations in AI answers, and a topic that still matters to your business.

Kite weighs each page against those questions and picks one of five outcomes:

• Keep a page that earns traffic, links, or conversions and is still accurate.
• Refresh a page on a topic you still care about that has gone out of date or slipped in the rankings. Kite rewrites it in place so it keeps its address and its history.
• Merge a page that overlaps with a stronger page on your site. Its useful material moves into the stronger page, and its address redirects there.
• Redirect a page whose topic is now covered better somewhere else on your site, especially when other websites still link to it. The redirect passes those visitors and that link value to the better page.
• Remove a page that has no traffic, no links, no conversions, and no remaining purpose, such as an announcement for a product you retired years ago.

Here's an example. Say you have a 2022 post announcing a webinar. It got 40 visits last year, but eight other websites link to it. Deleting it would throw those links away, so Kite recommends redirecting it to your current page on the same topic. A 2020 post about a feature you no longer offer, with no links and no visits, simply gets removed.

Each recommendation comes with the evidence behind it, so you can see why Kite chose it and overrule any call you disagree with.

Overlapping articles are pages on your site that compete for the same searches. Kite finds them by looking at which searches each page appears for in Search Console. When two or three of your pages show up for the same searches, they are splitting the clicks and rankings that one page could hold on its own.

Kite also reads the pages, because overlap is not always visible in the numbers. Three posts titled "How to write a cold email," "Cold email tips for founders," and "Our cold email playbook" may target slightly different searches but say mostly the same thing.

For each group of overlapping pages, Kite picks the page that should survive. That is usually the one with the most clicks, the most backlinks, or the cleanest address. Kite then writes a single combined page at that address. It keeps the best examples, data, and explanations from each version, cuts the repetition, updates anything that is out of date, and writes it in your brand voice. The other pages in the group are set to redirect to the combined page, so their visitors and links arrive there too.

You review the combined draft before anything changes on your site.

Removing and redirecting pages is where cleanup projects usually cause damage, through broken links, redirect chains, and old addresses that still sit in the sitemap. Kite handles these details as part of the same change, so the site stays consistent.

On a website Kite builds and hosts, Kite makes the whole change itself. When it retires a page, it removes the page and its sitemap entry together. When a retired page should redirect, Kite adds a permanent redirect that points straight to the final destination, so a visitor never bounces through two or three hops. It also updates the internal links on your other pages that pointed at the old address. You can preview the changes before they go live, and you can undo any single change afterward.

On a Webflow site, Kite updates the surviving page or CMS item with the merged content, deletes retired blog posts from your CMS collection, and sets retired static pages to draft so they stop loading. Kite can't add redirects through the Webflow connection, so it gives you the exact list of old and new addresses to paste into the 301 redirect settings in your Webflow site settings.

On a self-hosted WordPress site, Kite updates the surviving post with the merged content and sets retired posts back to draft, which takes them off your live site without deleting them. You can still restore them later. Kite gives you the list of redirects to add with the redirect plugin or server settings your site already uses.

By default, Kite asks for your approval before it publishes, removes, or redirects anything. You can approve the plan with the Approve button or a reply in the conversation.

Pruning only pays off if the pages you kept get stronger. Kite records the clicks, impressions, and rankings for every surviving page before the cleanup ships, then compares them with the same numbers once Google has had time to recrawl your site.

With Search Console connected, Kite can inspect individual addresses to confirm that Google has picked up the redirects and dropped the retired pages, and it can submit your updated sitemap. It also checks whether merged pages now rank for the searches that their old versions used to split. If a merged page lost ground, Kite looks at what changed and proposes a fix, such as restoring a section the old version had.

You can also ask Kite to repeat the review on a schedule, for example once a quarter. Each run starts from the current state of your site, flags any new overlaps or pages that have gone quiet, and brings you a fresh plan.