While most of the sites focus on publishing new content to attract their audience, the truth is that you can generate more results by updating the content you already have on your site.
If you have been blogging for a long time, you probably have a backlog of old posts that have not been updated in the last 2-3 years since you published them. But even if you completely forgot about those old posts, your target audience is still discovering those pages through Google searches or other referral sources.
When new readers visit your site and go through an old, outdated, or no longer relevant post, it can increase your bounce rate, affect your ranking, and invariably sabotage your content marketing strategy.
Some posts keep falling apart until someone visits them. Some posts freeze at low traffic levels, bringing in a few hits every day/week/month, but not too much. Some, of course, end up those evergreen viral pieces we all yearn to create, with spikes of massive traffic and a high baseline every day.
The good old 80/20 rule applies here. 80% of your traffic comes from 20% of your blog posts. So what do you do with the rest of the old post?
Some people ignore them. They exist, they are link fodder, they are back catalogs, but they really aren’t worth much. Others remove them, purging the worst content from their catalog and making their whole blog look stronger, albeit smaller.
Freshness Matters for Google
Google decides how fresh the content should be based on the type of user query.
A web page is given a freshness rating based on its date of inception. The older a blogpost or webpage becomes, it will become stale in the eyes of Google for some niches.
Google also considers the frequency of updating web pages and gives freshness scores accordingly. Often a document whose content has been edited may be scored differently from a document whose content remains constant over time.
Also, a document containing a relatively large amount of content updated over time may be scored differently than a document with a relatively small amount of content updated over time.
Some content has a unique nature that will remain evergreen even when time lapses. So Google looks at the link’s freshness, pointing to the web page to determine what type of content the site has.
If a high authority site points to a web page that is ten years old, then Google presumes that the old piece of content is still relevant and fresh.
Why Is It So Effective to Update Old Articles?
There are at least 5 common reasons to update an old post and then write something new:
- The topic has been vetted as you’ve data from the first edition.
- It’s faster to do this because some research is already done.
- It is higher quality because the updated article goes deeper into the topics.
- It’s easy to promote on social media because you’ll know just who to share it with.
- It can rank higher in search because the URL may already have authority and backlinks.
In other words, you will get better results with less effort.
Why Is It Essential to Update Blog Posts?
Relevance is one of the significant factors that determine a blog post’s SEO status – and relevance is usually determined by helpful content, a post’s last published date, and whether or not it’s up-to-date.
So, if you have an old, well-performing post, you need to ensure you keep it as relevant as possible with published updates, so its traffic and Page Authority stay high.
An updated post that was previously successful on your blog will usually rank higher in searches than a new post because you are building off the authority the successful post has already accumulated.
The updates also tell Google’s algorithm that your content is a better resource and can increase blog post traffic by up to 70%, depending on a few things.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to update old blog posts for more organic traffic in these easy steps.
1. Find the Keywords the Post is Already Ranking For
The first thing you need to do is enter the keywords that the post is already listed for. Start by searching for the keywords listed on pages one or two of the SERPs (usually positions 1-20).
2. Keep the Same URL
Instead of publishing the updated post as a new article, which can result in search engines thinking your post has duplicate content, simply modify the original post and keep the URL exactly the same. You can write the updated post in a separate document and copy/paste it to the original post for republishing it.
3. Update Content for Accuracy
You shouldn’t just update the content only for the sake of updating it. Instead, pay attention to old or outdated blog posts. When updating a post, evaluate all content for accuracy in determining the sections that need to be removed, changed, or added.
It’s good practice to see how other websites address the same topic and how you can do it better. You can monitor content by keywords, topics, and sources using a discovering tool. You can analyze the top pages getting the most engagement.
You should also make sure that you check the popular keyword tags and the average word count of the post for the selected keyword or topic to update your old blog posts accordingly to maximize engagement. Shortlist the top web pages and analyze them carefully to understand why they are so popular and modify your current posts accordingly.
4. Address or Rebut Competing Content
You aren’t publishing in a vacuum. When you’re writing new content, so too are your competitors. Your old content would sometimes suddenly lose traffic because a competitor wrote their version? It sucks, but it’s also an opportunity.
See what your competitor is saying, and address their points. Convert your original post into an expanded rebuttal to their content. As much as you can, address their concerns, argue for – or in against of their points, and generally suggest improvements for your old post as well as for their post. Then, take your lunch back, don’t let them just eat it in front of you.