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DIGITECH guide · 2 min read

Refresh, rewrite or retire: deciding what to do with old content

A short decision procedure for ageing pages, so the archive stays accurate without rewriting everything each year.

Published · Updated · Reviewed November 20, 2025

The procedure

Review each page older than twelve months against four questions, in order. Stop at the first yes.

  1. Is it wrong? Facts, prices, names, screenshots, laws. If anything on the page is no longer true, fix it now (refresh) and record the revision date.
  2. Does it duplicate a better page? Merge the useful parts into the better page, redirect this one to it (retire).
  3. Is it still asked about? Check impressions and internal search. If nobody has asked in a year and it is not a dependency for another page, archive it with a redirect to the hub (retire).
  4. Is it thin compared with what you now know? Rewrite from the current outline, keep the URL, keep the parts that still hold (rewrite).

Where this applies

Written and reviewed by

Written by

Maya Chen

Director of Search Strategy

14 years in search · Leads SEO and AI search programs for behavioral health and specialty care

Published

Maya leads the search practice at DIGITECH. She plans the SEO and AI search programs behind the agency’s behavioral health and specialty healthcare accounts, and writes about how families and patients actually research care. Her work starts with the question a person types, not the keyword a tool suggests.

Editorially reviewed by

Elias Morgan

Editorial Director

Former healthcare trade editor · Checks every guide against its cited sources before publication

Reviewed

Elias runs editorial review for everything DIGITECH publishes. He reads each draft against the sources it cites, checks the claims a client could be held to, and signs off on the review date that appears on the page. Before DIGITECH he edited a healthcare trade publication for eight years.

Checked against the sources above on November 20, 2025. The revision date changes whenever the text does; the review date only changes when the guide is re-checked.

Sources

  1. Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content — Google Search Central

About this guide

Published · Updated