Are you hoping to move up the Google rankings and gain more search engine traffic this quarter? One of the simplest strategies to boost your SERP position and see you rise up the rankings is to update your outdated articles and web pages. Keep reading to learn how your outdated articles can drastically increase your traffic.
Editing your archive posts is a simple tactic that doesn’t take too much effort. Of course, we’re not telling you to stop creating and publishing new content, but updating old content is certainly an efficient way to get the results you want.
Why Does Updating Outdated Content Boost Your Search Engine Ranking?
You may be asking how exactly updating your old blog posts and web pages help your search ranking – let’s break it down.
1. Recent Posts Rank Higher on SERPs.
Google loves fresh content, especially when it comes to topics that are evolving and changing frequently. So it’s no surprise that content published recently ranks higher than older content.
[cta-button background_url=”https://matchboxdesigngroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Update-Your-Keywords-_-Matchbox-Design-Group-_-St.-Louis-MO.png” title=”We Need To Talk!” button_text=”Push The Button” url=”https://matchboxdesigngroup.com/contact-us/” /]
It’s clear that you should be publishing new content frequently, however, this leaves your old content to die a slow death. Your older articles and posts will lose its search engine ranking slowly over time no matter how relevant it still is. To combat this revive your old content every so often with updates, it’s an effective way to boost your position in search engine results pages with little effort. This is because the next time Google crawls your website it will see the content as fresh and you’ll see a boost in traffic – web marketing guru Neil Patel boasts that it’s “an easy way to double your traffic”.
2. Improves Your Click- Through Rate.
When you perform a search you’ll notice that the majority of the top 5 results have been published in the last year. This is because people prefer to read up to date content. Imagine you’re searching for ‘Best TVs’ because you want to purchase a new TV. Naturally, you’re going to want to read the most up to date article because current information is more relevant to your purchase decision and therefore more valuable to you. It goes without saying that if the content on your website has a recent publication date then users will be more likely to click through. Click-through rate is an important aspect of SEO and the more clicks you get the more likely you are to secure a high SERP position.
3. Improves Your Authority.
We all know that feeling of reading through an old post and coming across a cringe-worthy spelling mistake or an annoying broken link.
Google is all about providing a great user experience and it’s obvious that bad spelling and broken links are frustrating for readers. Both of these nagging issues are simple and easy to fix but without attention, they can negatively impact user experience and eventually show in your ranking.
Spend a little time finding those frustrating broken links and correcting bad spelling – you’re sure to see your traffic increase. For inspiration take a look at how Ahrefs increased traffic to a page by 486% through small edits and promoting the article again.
5 Easy Ways to Update Your Content and Increase Your Traffic
It’s clear that updating outdated and archived content is an effective strategy to increase your traffic with little effort. Here are five ways that you can update your content.
1. Keep The Same URL
First things first, when you update your posts be sure to update the original page, not create a new one. Some people recommend creating an entirely new page to replace the old content because this adds more pages to the index. It’s better to simply update the original article and keep the existing URL. SEMPost shares a tweet on the topic from Google WebMaster John Mueller and explains further.
Keeping the same URL is beneficial because the URL has an established history and will have previously earned some rankings. If you create a whole new page, you’ll be starting from scratch.
2. Update The Published Date
Don’t let your hard work go to waste, once you’ve revived an old blog post and you’re ready to publish make sure to update the date to today’s date. Now, this may seem like a small tip but it makes all the difference.
The next time Google crawls your website it will recognize the updated post as fresh content which will boost search engine traffic for that page. This is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get the Google bots to recognize your content and bring your rankings back from the dead.
3. Update Your Keywords
A great way to update your content to increase traffic is to take a look at your keywords. Chances are your archived content is focused on old keywords that may not be your priority anymore. Do your research and find some new keywords that you want to rank for.
You don’t need to do any huge rewrites, just small well-placed additions in your post will boost you in the search engine rankings.
4. Follow Up on Old Posts
Another way to revive old posts is by turning popular posts into a series – take a look at your most popular content and think about how you can turn it into a two-part post. This will not only extend the life of the old blog post but is an easy way to create content that is guaranteed to be popular with your audiences.
The golden rules for creating a series post are to make sure that you include the original title of the first post as well as adding “Part Two” at the beginning or end of the title – you’ll also need to include a backlink to your original post.
5. Promote Content Again
After all your hard work repurposing your content and updating it don’t forget to promote it like you would do with a brand new piece of content. You also need to circulate your links more than once for the best chance of exposure, don’t just promote your content once. Take a look at this article which shows how reposting content can rack up 75% of the engagement of the first post.
Social media is a great tool to promote content as it drives shares and helps you to get fresh mentions, all of which builds rankings, boosts brand trust, and helps conversions. There are many services which help you to automate this so you can “set it and forget it” helping your old content stay in circulation.
There you have it, five simple ways to breath new life into your outdated articles and content. By using the tips and techniques above you’ll be sure to drastically increase your traffic.
Gust Blogger Author Bio:
Nicolas Finet is the Co-founder of sort-list.co.uk – an online solutions company which helps customers to find the best marketing agencies. Follow him on Twitter @nifinet!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nifinet
Gravatar Email/Personal Email: nicolas.finet@sortlist.com
Sources Used For This Article:
Using Twitter Recirculation To Maximize Content Marketing Effectiveness – via Tom Tunguz https://tomtunguz.com/twitter-content-recirculation/
The SEO Impact of Click-Through Rate (What You Need to Know) – Via ConversionXL https://conversionxl.com/guides/click-through-rate/seo/
Google: Keep Same URLs When Replacing Old Content With New – Via SEMPost https://www.thesempost.com/google-keep-urls-replacing-old-content-new/
Evergreen Content: How Updating An Old Post Boosted Pageviews by 468% – via Ahrefs https://ahrefs.com/blog/evergreen-content/
How to Double Your Traffic by Finding the Low-Hanging Fruit in Your Blog Archives – via Neil Patel https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-double-your-traffic-by-finding-the-low-hanging-fruit-in-your-blog-archives/
Image Sources:
https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2017/02/06/00/22/keywords-letters-2041816_960_720.jpg
https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2014/07/01/12/34/office-381228_960_720.jpg
