The older your content gets, its performance tends to decline on the search engine result page (SERP). When your blogs, articles or social media posts become old, the information and cited data become outdated, and the audience moves on to new trends. Its impressions, clicks and ranking drop, requiring you to look for new content.
Do you need to discard your old posts when they are old?
No, you can simply refresh content for SEO optimisation. Learn how to update your content below to boost your traffic while keeping your expenses low.
Here’s everything you need to know.
Is Your SEO Rewarded by Refreshing Old Content?
The short answer is yes. When your content becomes old and outdated, there are several negative effects that may happen:
- Your post may have inaccurate or obsolete information, which can mislead readers and harm your site’s reputation.
- Since search engines prioritise fresh content, your outdated content could lose visibility in the search results.
- Your old posts could become completely irrelevant if they were based on past trends or news.
- It could lack the usability and engagement expected by viewers. This could result in higher bounce rates and lower time on the page.
The usefulness of refreshing content is backed by statistics. A study conducted by Semrush revealed that 42% of businesses have seen an increase in value by updating old content for SEO.
Why Do You Need to Refresh Content for SEO?
Here are some compelling reasons why you need to refresh content on a regular basis:
- To Maintain Website Authority: A reputable site needs to provide helpful and relevant information. However, when your content shows outdated information or incorrect stats, your domain authority will decrease.
- To Improve User Experience: Older content can be harmful to readers, especially in the YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics that directly impact people’s happiness, health and safety.
- To Increase Click-through Rates: Sometimes, old content may contain headlines, taglines, meta tags, and call-to-action tones that have become irrelevant. When you refresh content for SEO, your links will become more clickable.
- To Revive Old Rankings: Google strives to provide content that is relevant, authoritative, expertly written and trustworthy. Outdated articles and blogs lose their rankings as they don’t meet these requirements. This is when content syndication is necessary.
Which Content Do You Need to Refresh for SEO?
Contrary to popular belief, not all of your old blog posts and articles need to be refreshed. Instead, you should prioritise the following types of content:
- Posts with Some Activity: Some posts may not be worth your time or money. For example, if you have a post with 10-20 monthly views, you could consider avoiding updates. However, if the target keywords are important to your business, you could consider revamping the entire post.
- Pages with Outdated Information: Your website may have pages with well-written content but with outdated data. This can include outdated product details, statistics, dates, industry trends, etc. If all you need to do is update these data, refresh the content for SEO.
- High Potential Pages: Some of your existing pages could be ranking highly (say 6th to 10th) or have a powerful backlink profile. If you can get first page ranking with just a little work, ensure to update them first for the best “bang for buck”.
- Pages Updated by Your Competitors: Keeping an eye out on your competitors is always a good idea, especially for your most valuable keywords. Stay updated about changes in links, headings, and edits made on the pages of your top competitors.
How to Refresh Content for SEO?
Now that you know what content to refresh for SEO on your website, let’s go through the steps to revamp the outdated content:
Step 1: Build a List of Old Pages to Refresh
First, you need to filter all old pages using your business’s content management system. Shortlist the number of pages to update based on their traffic, URL structure and ranking keywords. You can use Google Analytics to find pages with the potential to rank at the top.
Step 2: Analyse the Data on Shortlisted Pages
Determine the pages that are losing their ranking power due to old age. Use Google Analytics to check how their rankings and organic traffic have dropped since they were first published. Also, check the leads generated, conversion rates, social media engagement and banklink quality. This will help you identify the pages for refreshing content for SEO.
Step 3: Find High Potential Keywords
Once you have decided which pages to update, use SEO writing tools to find trending keywords and long-tail keywords used by your competitors. Find keywords that align with your business’s expertise and create topic clusters to support your new content.
Step 4: Change Meta Tags and Add Internal Links
Before updating the content body, pay attention to the meta title and meta description. Test new meta tags to see which one performs the best. Similarly, change the headings and check if the new headings perform better. In addition, you should improve the internal linking to enhance the content for both viewers and the search engine.
Step 5: Update the Rest of the Content
Now, you must look into the content body and identify areas in which the old post can be improved. Here is a list of things you will want to change/add to refresh content for SEO:
- Old statistics, quotes, research reports and other data
- Add background information and relevant examples
- Change the total word length of the post
- Add Frequently Asked Questions and knowledge panels
- Incorporate images, infographics and videos into your content
- Remove irrelevant content and generic pointers
- Check the formatting and writing style
Bottom Line
When you refresh content for SEO, it is important to have a streamlined process that lets you update the most valuable posts first. Follow the above-detailed steps and create a content calendar to stay organised. If you require help, hiring professional blog writers from a reputable content writing agency can help. The experts at these agencies can help form a content strategy to ensure that updates are constantly implemented.
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