Very often the new is the well-forgotten old, and this principle also works with your content. It is much easier to update materials that already work for you than to create everything from scratch. Therefore, in this article, we have compiled a step-by-step algorithm of actions for updating your articles on the website and in the blog so that they begin to bring even more efficiency both in terms of search engine promotion and user engagement. Use this guide to refreshing old content.
Why You Should Refresh The Content You Already Have
We have already said that it is easier and more profitable than re-writing everything, but there are several more factors that you need to take into account.
Seo Is The Main Focus Of Most Companies Competing On The Web
According to Hubspot, most companies consider SEO promotion the most promising direction for improving the site’s position in search results. And this is a great reason to reconsider your approaches and make your articles more visible in the search.
Google Likes Fresh Data
Yes, there is evergreen content that will always be well ranked by Google, of course, provided that the article or blog post gives users the maximum benefit. As Google claims, each material needs a different degree of freshness.
Therefore, if, for example, you did a trend review in a particular industry in 2016, then at the moment, all this information is already hopelessly outdated and can only be used for comparative analysis. This is just the case when the content needs to be updated or continued.
You Can Deliver More Value
As soon as you revise outdated publications and do new research on a specific issue, the value of your content for users increases several times. And this means improved behavioral factors, and better positions in search results, as a result.
This Is The Opportunity To Get More Targeted Readers
Modern users can use completely different combinations of key queries than they used a few years ago. And if you want to get a new influx of fresh blood, then updating the semantic core of each article is what you need.
Step By Step Refreshing Plan
So, let’s move on to the immediate steps for updating your content.
Pick An Article You Want To Start From
Here you need to prioritize correctly. You can act in several ways.
- Choose an article that contains a lot of outdated statistics, approaches, or tips that no longer work due to changes in certain processes in your niche.
- Choose an article that used to give you the best results, but now its position has begun to decline due to outdated information.
- Choose an article that collected the most likes, comments, or questions, and update it by analyzing the feedback from users.
Unfortunately, there is no universal advice – choose your priority based on your business goals.
Find The Key Queries Your Article Is Already Ranking For
After you have selected the article that you need to update, you need to remember what keywords you used. Perhaps this article was the result of your free creativity, and in this case, most likely Google did not manage to understand by what requests to rank it. If you have used SEO queries, now you need to review their relevance. For example, you can go to Google Keyword Planner and find out how many users have used a particular phrase to search in the last month.
- If a certain phrase is in the first position, then you can leave it for further SEO promotion.
- If this search query has lost relevance, then it makes sense to either remove it or leave it as an additional keyword phrase.
Come Up With New Targeted Keywords That Are Now On The Wave
Now you need to do more research and find new keywords that users use today to find relevant content.
- Start by brainstorming and come up with the maximum number of key queries that are relevant to the topic of your article.
- Use WordTracker to get more options.
- Go back to the Google Keyword Planner and check once again the frequency of use of each key request
- You can also use Google Trends to get the full picture.
Take Voice Search Into Account
According to forecasts, voice search will make up 50% of all search queries by 2020. And you need to consider this when planning key queries and updating content.
In the case of voice search, Google will show only one of the most relevant results in the form of a question and answer. Therefore, pre-generate a list of questions users can ask as part of your topic and think over the structure of the post so that Google can show part of your article as an answer to the question.
Revise Your Headline And Metadata
Review the title of your article again. If it contains outdated dates, such as 2016, be sure to update this. Also, check the appeal of your headline with the Headline Analyzer.
Besides, pay attention to the freshness of metadata. By analogy, replace outdated numbers with new ones, plus add new key queries in the meta description.
Add More Value To Your Post
All SEO efforts will be in vain if SEO is your only goal.
Your content should become even better so that it begins to generate better results. For this,
- Find new research, trends, and statistics on your topic.
- Suggest new ways to solve a specific problem of your users
- Try to increase engagement through unique graphics, suitable videos, and feedback forms.
Add Links To Authoritative Sources
Be sure to keep all the links to publications that you refer to in your article. This will be equally useful both for SEO promotion and for your users, who themselves can make sure that the data you are using is fresh and reliable.
And Make Sure You Also Have Some Backlinks To Strengthen Your Position
In addition to the fact that your updated post should contain links to reliable information, you also need to increase your position due to backlinks to your publication. As you can see, Google considers this indicator extremely important, so this is a good way to increase the position of your article in search results and gain a foothold there.
It will take a very long time to build the link base manually and most likely, by the time you complete this task, you will again have to update your content. Therefore, it is better to take advantage of a ready-made solution, for example, contact LinksManagement and get a large number of backlinks from authoritative sources.
Set Your New Goals
When your content is ready, you need to set new goals and start tracking performance. For example, your goal may be to increase the number of subscribers through the lead form or to reach the top issue in three months. In any case, these goals should be consistent with your business goals, and you must use Google Analytics to track results.
Promote Your Updated Article
You can use this algorithm for every article you update. However, for the updated articles to start working for you today, you need to let users know that you have reviewed your post and can guarantee that it will do more good. To do this, you can announce it on social networks, or notify the user via an email list (and it is even better to use both methods).
Think About Internal Linking
Content updates are a process that can take a lot of time. Therefore, be sure to think about how your updated articles will link to each other to increase the time spent on the site, improve behavioral factors and perception by search engines.
