Content bloat, dead ends, and ghost pages made simple: A digital housecleaning manifesto

Step 1: Burn it down (with a spreadsheet)

Before you talk templates, UX, IA, or SEO, you start with the audit.

We go in cold. Unbiased. Merciless. We map every page, every path, every asset.
And we ask three questions about each one:

• Who is this for? (Not “who signed it off,” but who uses it and why)
• What job does it do? (Awareness? Decision support? SEO bait? Internal appeasement?)
• What would happen if we deleted it tomorrow? (Spoiler: usually nothing)

From there, we score content across three axes:

• Utility (Does it help a real user do something they care about?)
• Clarity (Is it readable, relevant, and structured?)
• Performance (Traffic, engagement, conversions…not just vanity metrics)

Then we colour-code:

• Keep (rare)
• Revise (common)
• Kill (glorious)
  

The aim isn’t to make marketing feel bad.

The aim is to build a leaner, faster, more human site. To simplify and embark on a fresh start with best practice in mind. Be harsh and take no prisoners at the ‘kill’ stage.

Step 2: Find the ghosts

Ghost pages are content that technically exists, but functionally doesn’t.

They live in your sitemap, but not in any real journey. They show up in search, but not in strategy. They were built once to support a product, campaign, or narrative that no longer lives.

You can identify them by:

• <2 pageviews/month over 6 months
• Broken external links to old posts/events
• No internal links in or out
• Stale copy (last updated pre-pandemic)
• Metadata that still uses now-cringe buzzwords like “solutioneering”
  

These pages dilute your messaging, fragment your traffic, and create friction for users who just want a straight answer.

We isolate them. Redirect what matters. And cut the rest.

Step 3: Kill the rigid content hierarchy. Design for user logic.

Here’s what too many B2B sites get wrong:

They mirror internal structure, not user journeys.

Sales wants their section. Product insists on feature detail. Regions want local flavour. The CMO wants to “drive thought leadership.”

Meanwhile, the buyer wants three things:

• What do you do?
• How does it help me?
• Why should I care now?
  

If your navigation or site structure can’t support that in under 10 seconds, you’re losing them. So we strip back the nav. Flatten the content hierarchy. Remove internal silos from the UX. Then we rebuild around entry points and user tasks, not internal politics.

Step 4: Build for momentum, not completion

Most B2B sites try to “complete the sale.” They want to educate, persuade, convince, convert all in one go.

That’s not how decisions happen.

We design digital experiences that do one thing well: move people one meaningful step forward.

That might be:

• Nudging them from “curious” to “interested”
• Helping them explain you to a stakeholder
• Giving them the confidence to book a demo or ask for pricing
  

To do that, we:

• Use short-form storytelling, not whitepaper walls
• Design CTAs for progression, not commitment
• Map content clusters to specific intent levels, not personas or departments

Step 5: Make it easy to kill stuff later

A housecleaning mindset isn’t a one-off project, it’s a long-term discipline.

So when we build new content, we bake in expiration logic:

• Review dates
• Performance triggers
• Owner visibility (if nobody owns it, it shouldn’t really go live)

We also make sure CMS structures are flexible. So that when the business changes (again), you can adapt fast, without burning the whole thing down again.

What you get when you let go

When we do this work with clients, they usually start off nervous.

Then they see:

• Bounce rate drops
• Engagement rises
• Conversion paths simplify
• Internal teams finally embracing the CMS
• And their brand finally sounds like it knows who it is

More importantly, buyers stop getting lost.

And start taking action.

TL;DR: You don’t need more pages. You need more progress.

Content bloat is a symptom of fear: fear of cutting the wrong thing, of upsetting stakeholders, of letting go.

But digital isn’t a library. It’s a tool.

So treat it like one.

Audit. Cut. Redirect. Simplify.

Build a site that works for your users, not just your org chart.

And if you want help with the machete work?

You know where to find us.