Update Your Old Content For SEO

Update Your Old Content For SEO

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Creating more and more content takes a lot of time and can be complicated. Instead, you can update your old content and give yourself a ‘freshness’ score. This requires less work and delivers results faster.

When Google understands that content is new you will get a rise in traffic and this will make your efforts worth it. You can refresh your blog as follows:

  • First, determine which content you need to refresh.
  • Review your current rankings using keyword software
  • For content ideas check ‘People Also Ask’.
people also ask
  • For additional sub-topics utilise ‘Related Searches’.

Why should the content be refreshed?

You can update your content whenever you want but you need not update it if the content is performing well. You can update your content due to the following:

  • In case, new information becomes available then you should refresh your article. You should update your articles with new studies, new research and the most relevant backlinks. Topics can evolve over time.
  • If your posts become irrelevant like posts on ‘Covid-19’ then it needs to be refreshed or retired.
  • When your post has been published for a while and it starts to underperform. The clicks and the impressions start to drop off or you now rank for fewer keywords than before. You can refresh your content.
  • If your content has become old then the older the post gets the content and backlinks become more outdated. You should review your content at least once a year so that it does not become too outdated for the users.
AspectDescriptionSupporting StatisticsSource
Impact on RankingsUpdating old content can improve its search engine ranking.74% of marketers who update old content see increased rankings.SEMrush
Traffic GrowthRefreshed content attracts more visitors.Organic traffic increases by 106% for updated content.HubSpot
Improved Click-Through RateEnhanced meta descriptions and titles boost CTR.Updating meta descriptions improves CTR by up to 6%.Search Engine Journal
Cost EfficiencyUpdating content is cheaper than creating new content.60% more cost-effective than creating new content.Ahrefs
Content RelevanceAdding new data and examples makes content more relevant to current trends.61% of marketers say relevance drives their content updates.Content Marketing Institute
Engagement MetricsImproved content retains user attention longer.Average time on page increases by 32% after updates.Backlinko
Backlink PotentialUpdated content is more likely to attract new backlinks.Pages that are refreshed attract 48% more backlinks over time.Neil Patel
Indexing by Search EnginesRegularly updated content is crawled more frequently by search engines.Google prefers fresh content and crawls updated pages faster.Moz
Conversion RatesUpdated content can align with current customer needs and improve conversions.Conversion rates increase by 25% for updated blog posts.OptinMonster

How to refresh your old content?

To create refreshed content you can approach SEO services or do it yourself. These are the ways you can refresh your old content:

  • There are several ways to determine which content is not performing well and how to decide that it should be refreshed. Use Google Analytics and view the historical traffic data for the previous year. If it is waning then you should refresh your content. You should check all your posts that are over one year old.
  • You should check the keyword rankings for opportunities that suggest that the content needs to be refreshed. You can use tools like Ahrefs and find the keywords that your post ranks for and find their volume. You can filter the keywords with ‘what’, ‘how to’ and ‘where’ words to get better results. You can see if you find any valuable keywords which can be used to refresh your content.
ahrefs
  • Use Google Search Console to find the keyword that ranks on page one or page two of the SERPs. You can check through the keywords and find any subtopics that are worth mentioning.
  • For additional keyword ideas, you can target ‘People Also Ask’. The more results you expand the more questions will be provided by Google. You can find any questions to include in your FAQs.
  • You can scroll down to the bottom of the SERPs and find related searches. You can find more topics here that are relevant to your blog topic. You can create content for these.
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