Chapter 12 — Exercises

Work these in order; they climb from recall to real auditing, diagnosis, and judgment. You will need a live browser and, ideally, a site whose content you can inspect in Search Console and analytics — your own, your employer's, or a client's. Every tool named here is free. Items marked with a dagger (†) have full worked solutions in Appendix — Answers to Selected Exercises; odd-numbered items are worked there too. Attempt every item before you look.

Keep the chapter's two threads in mind throughout: sort the evidence (the pruning result is real, the "delete for a boost" hack is not — and freshness is query-dependent), and content is an asset with a lifecycle (create is only half the job; maintain and prune is the other half).

A. Recall and vocabulary

Exercise 12.1 — Define content decay in your own words. Name three distinct causes of it, and mark which one is not actually the page's fault (the results page changed, not the content).

Exercise 12.2 — A page's clicks fell over the last year but its average position did not move. What kind of decay is this called in the chapter, and which single report tells you position held while CTR fell?

Exercise 12.3 — List the four axes a content audit scores each URL on. Then name the two additional columns the chapter says will save you from expensive mistakes.

Exercise 12.4 † — State the four content-audit decisions in order, and give the one-line test that routes a page to merge rather than delete.

Exercise 12.5 — Define historical optimization. Name two "assets" an already-published page has that a brand-new page does not.

Exercise 12.6 — Define keyword cannibalization precisely. Finish the sentence: "Two pages sharing a keyword is not cannibalization unless they also __ and ____."

Exercise 12.7 — What is freshness, and what does "query-dependent" mean for it? Give one query type where it helps a lot and one where it barely applies.

B. Applied reasoning

Exercise 12.8 — Explain, using the idea that ranking is a relative contest, how a page can lose rankings without a single word of it changing. Name two of the three "clocks" ticking against every page.

Exercise 12.9 † — The chapter claims pruning a bloated site can raise its total traffic. Explain the honest mechanism (name the three effects), then state one condition under which pruning would produce no gain and one under which it would lose traffic.

Exercise 12.10 — Why does updating an existing page often beat publishing a new one on the same topic? Frame your answer in terms of Chapter 1's pipeline (indexing, age, links, rankings).

Exercise 12.11 — Distinguish historical optimization from freshness theater (a date change). Why does one earn a benefit and the other doesn't — and why can the date change actively hurt?

Exercise 12.12 — A colleague wants to merge two blog posts because both contain the word "thermostat." Explain, in the book's honest style, when merging is right and when this instinct destroys useful pages.

Exercise 12.13 — Work the arithmetic. A page ranks position 9 for a query with 1,500 monthly searches; a realistic update should move it to about position 4. Using round, illustrative CTRs of ~2% at position 9 and ~9% at position 4, estimate the extra monthly visits. State clearly why this is an illustration, not a promise.

Exercise 12.14 — Give two reasons a page with near-zero traffic might still be a keep, not a delete. Tie each to one of the audit's non-traffic axes.

C. Diagnose the problem

For each scenario, name the most likely cause and the first thing you would check or fix. Some have more than one defensible answer — say why.

Exercise 12.15 † — A site's flagship guide has held position 2 for two years, but organic clicks are down about 30% year-over-year. The team is drafting a full rewrite. What do you check first, and why might the rewrite be wasted effort?

Exercise 12.16 † — In Search Console, one query shows two of the site's URLs trading positions in the low teens over 90 days, neither reaching page one. Name the problem and the preferred fix, and say what you would do to the "losing" URL.

Exercise 12.17 — A blog "refreshes" 200 old posts in a weekend by changing every published date to today. Rankings don't move; a few readers complain the "updated" articles are obviously unchanged. Diagnose what went wrong and what real historical optimization would have required.

Exercise 12.18 — An e-commerce store discontinues a product and 301-redirects its URL to the homepage. Weeks later, the equity from that product page's three backlinks seems to have vanished. Explain why, and give the correct handling.

Exercise 12.19 — A furnace-repair page "loses" traffic every spring and the owner wants to delete it. Why is this a diagnostic trap, and what comparison settles it?

Exercise 12.20 — After a large content prune, Search Console shows a spike in 404s for exactly the pages the team deleted on purpose. The team panics. Are these 404s a problem? Explain, and note when a 410 would have been the cleaner choice.

D. On your own site (use a free tool)

Exercise 12.21 † — Build a decay report. In Search Console → Performance, compare the last 6 months to the previous 6 months and sort by the change in clicks. Record your five biggest decliners. For each, note whether position fell (ranking loss) or CTR fell at a steady position (SERP erosion). Write one sentence on which of the two most of your decline is.

Exercise 12.22 — Find a cannibalization suspect. Pick a query you care about, filter Performance to it, and open the Pages view. Do two or more of your URLs both draw impressions for it? If yes, note their positions and clicks and propose keep-one / merge / differentiate. If no, say how you confirmed there's no problem.

Exercise 12.23 — Find a striking-distance page. Filter Performance to positions ~5–20 with real impressions. Pick one page and list three specific improvements (title, coverage, internal links) you'd make. Estimate — with clearly-illustrative CTRs — the traffic swing if it reached the top of page one.

Exercise 12.24 — Start an audit. Take one section of your site (a blog, a category) and build a simple sheet: URL, 12-month clicks, best position, whether it converts, a 1–5 quality score, backlinks (yes/no), and a decision column. Fill 15 rows. What share came out delete or merge? Were you surprised?

E. Read the report / read the SERP

Exercise 12.25 † — Interpret this audit row and give a decision with reasoning.

FIGURE E.1 — "One audited URL"                               [constructed teaching example]
  URL            /blog/how-to-choose-an-hvac-contractor
  TRAFFIC        GA4: 260 organic sessions / 12 months (steady)
  RANKINGS       GSC: avg position 6 for "how to choose an hvac contractor" (1,000 searches/mo)
  CONVERSIONS    GA4: 9 booking-form starts attributed to this page in 12 months
  QUALITY        Solid but 3 years old; missing the "questions to ask" and "licensing" angles rivals cover
  LINKS          4 referring domains (two local, genuine)
  INDEXATION     "URL is on Google"

Which of the four decisions fits, and what specific work would you queue? Name one thing you would not do.

Exercise 12.26 — Sketch (in words or rough ASCII) a Search Console "Pages" view for a query where cannibalization is present versus one where it is not. What is the distinguishing pattern, and why is the second case not a problem to fix?

F. Myths, ethics, and judgment

Exercise 12.27 — Spot the myth. A popular thread claims: "Google rewards fresh content, so update every post's date monthly and you'll keep your rankings." Identify every false or misleading claim and replace the whole thing with what actually earns a freshness benefit (and where freshness doesn't apply at all).

Exercise 12.28 † — Spot the (other) myth. A different consultant says: "Deleting content is dangerous — more indexed pages is always better, so never remove anything." Rebut it with the chapter's evidence, and state the correct posture on removing thin pages.

Exercise 12.29 — Ethics/judgment. A stakeholder wants to display "Last updated: 2026" on 500 articles that were not actually revised, "because dated content looks fresh." Give the trust/E-E-A-T objection (Chapter 5) and the honest alternative. Then name the one situation in which updating the date is correct.

G. The Strategy File (Rivertown Home Services)

Exercise 12.30 † — Extend Rivertown's blog audit. From Figure 12.4, take the MERGE verdict on the five "get your AC ready for summer" posts. Write the plan: what the single consolidated page should cover, which URL survives, what happens to the other four URLs, and which internal links you'd add. State what this fixes (name the term from §12.5).

Exercise 12.31 — Rivertown's "Signs your water heater is failing" post is a update verdict (2019 prices, a dead rebate link, no internal links). Draft the historical-optimization to-do list: three content changes, one on-page change (Chapter 9), and two internal links to add. Say honestly what this update can and cannot promise.

Exercise 12.32 — Do Chapter 12's Strategy-File task on your own (or a client's) site: audit one content section into keep/update/merge/delete, and pick the single highest-leverage update (a striking-distance page). Produce a short written plan — the audit verdicts as a table, plus a one-paragraph update brief for that one page. Decide the verdicts; only plan (don't yet execute) the deletes and the update.

Where these go next. Keep your answers to 12.21, 12.23, 12.24, 12.30, 12.31, and 12.32 — the audit table and the update brief are the content-maintenance layer of your running Strategy File (Appendix C's worksheet). The cannibalization and redirect work connects forward to Chapter 15 (Site Architecture) and Chapter 21 (Site Migrations); the full audit framework returns, at whole-site scale, in Chapter 38 (SEO Audits).