You wrote it years ago! People liked it, clicked, commented, and shared. Then your readers moved on but you never looked back. You can’t always publish new content. Maybe, its time you updated that old blog post and promote it again.
Updating old blog posts is found to be one of the most effective SEO strategies. This helps in keeping your website fresh, visitors engaged, and boost your ranking. Most of us may add the latest date to an old post and update it but to get better ranking, organic traffic, engagement and conversions- you can always get the assistance of a renowned digital marketing agency in Kerala.
How to update old content on your website?
Collect your data
Firstly have a clear idea of which posts to optimize. Ideally all of them but it`s good to know where to start.
Find the right pages to update
The three kinds of pages are-
- Brings high traffic but low conversions-
These type of posts can bring in more leads and conversions when optimized.
- Gets low traffic but high conversions-
Measures to increase traffic can improve the number of leads and conversions.
- Former popular content
These posts earned links and shares back in the day but whose traffic and ranking has gone down in recent times.
Firstly pick 10-30 posts for optimization. You can do more at a later stage. After selecting the posts apply the below techniques to get desired results.
Update your keyword research
Keyword research is the basic foundation of any SEO strategy. A keyword that was popular months ago may not yield same search volume now. Hence, it’s essential to re-optimize your keyword strategy. Updating your keyword strategy also lets you add additional keywords to your list.
Analyse search intent
Apart from understanding the relevant keywords, you also need to analyse the search intent. Don’t look at keywords alone, try to think about what the searcher might actually want.
Improve your headlines
Studies show that 80% of people read only the headlines while only 20% actually read the entire content. So a good way to optimize your old posts is by improving the headlines.
Update the content
Now let’s update the actual content of your website. Whether you plan to make few changes or a lot many. Look out for the following-
- Accurate data
Pay attention to any research or statistics you might have added and check whether new information has come out. If yes, update your post accordingly with the new data
- Broken links
Ensure that your outbound links are to existing and recent pages.
- Fresh visuals
Add exciting images and also update graphs or similar visual information if any. Also consider replacing images with gifs or videos.
- Spelling and grammar
Update your content for changes in grammar, spelling, formatting and other similar stuff.
- Internal links
Linking your new posts to the old content wherever appropriate is likely to improve your site structure.
Update the post date
Finally, before pushing out the updated content, change the date of the post. This is a good way to get people to click on your posts in Google.
Promote your updated post
After you have updated an existing post, your work isn’t over yet. Just like a new blog post, you need to promote it. You can ask Google to “recrawl” your post.
