Pulled my most-read essay to rewrite and split it
So here’s a weird one. The most-read page on my whole site turned out to be one of the worst-built.
It’s my Amex essay, the one Google actually sends people to. And that’s what made it annoying. It’s about credit cards and money, exactly the stuff that pulls search traffic, and it was pulling. On the numbers I had every reason to leave it alone.
But I went back and read it like a stranger would, and yeah, it didn’t hold up. One giant wall of perks, no summary at the top, so you can’t tell in five seconds whether any of it is worth your time. And that big “$2,300 a year” number in the headline? I tried to rebuild it from my own tables and couldn’t. The real figures land somewhere around $1,600 to $3,150, and a few line items were counting “value” for perks I was never going to use anyway. Stuff I actually have to fix, not just tidy up.
So I pulled it into draft. Not deleted, just parked. There’s a temporary redirect on the URL so Google keeps the address warm while I rewrite it (a permanent one basically tells Google to forget it, and I want it back). Cut the two internal links pointing at it too.
The plan now is to rewrite it properly and probably break it into a few smaller pieces, each answering one thing, with a quick summary up top. Much easier to follow than one long catalog.
Honestly the lesson for me is that traffic doesn’t mean the thing is good. This was my best-performing page and kind of my weakest at the same time, and I’d been happily watching the numbers for weeks without rereading it. Won’t make that one again.
Rewriting it next.