Perplexity and Burstiness: Removing Blog Posts from WordPress

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you want to remove old blog posts from your WordPress website, but don’t know how to do it without damaging your site? Don’t worry. In this article, we’ll guide you through the steps to remove posts from WordPress safely to ensure your website remains secure and functioning correctly..

Step 1: Backup Your Website

Before you even think about removing any posts, it’s vital to backup your website in case anything goes wrong. You can use a plugin like UpdraftPlus, BackupBuddy or VaultPress, your host’s backup service, or manually backup your website.

Step 2: Delete the Post

Now that you’ve backed up your website, you can delete the unwanted post without fear of losing your website’s contents. To delete a post, hover over the post, select “Trash” and click on “Delete Permanently” to remove it from your website once and for all.

Note that if you delete a post with comments, the comments also get removed.

Step 3: Redirect the Removed Post

After removing a post from your website, the next step is to redirect the removed post so that you don’t end up with broken links that can be harmful to your website’s SEO.

You can redirect the post to a new post or redirect the post to your homepage using a redirection plugin like Redirection or Simple 301 Redirects.

Step 4: Remove the Removed Post from Sitemap

After deleting the post, you need to remove it from the sitemap to ensure that Google doesn’t crawl and index the deleted page. Use a plugin like Yoast SEO or Rank Math to remove the post from the sitemap.

Step 5: Update Internal and External Links

Finally, ensure that you update any internal and external links that point to the deleted post to avoid any broken links that might harm your website’s SEO. You can use a tool like Ahrefs or Google Search Console to see all the external links pointing to the deleted post and then redirect them to a new post.

Deleting old blog posts from WordPress is a necessary task for any blogger, but doing it correctly will help keep your site functioning correctly while keeping it safe and secure. By following these simple steps, you can delete any unwanted, outdated or irrelevant posts from your website safely.