4 Steps To Update Your Content for Better SEO

Are you seeing a drop in traffic from your top blog content?

Update your content today.

Keep it clean, keep it relevant but never keep it un-fresh. Many fall into the mindset of set & forget when it comes to managing a blog section.

You’ve invested a lot of time and resources into planning, writing, and publishing your content. Don’t let it go to waste.

Evergreen content is good, but as the landscape changes, facts/information become outdated. What was good before can always turn bad (just like the donut I bought a few days back).

When this happens, your content turns into what Google calls stale. And such stale content quickly falls into the unfavourable side of the search engine results.

So if you’ve noticed a drop in traffic from your top content pieces recently, it’s time for a content audit. For the lucky ones who don’t experience this, it’s recommended to do the following once every quarter to avoid falling into the pitfall.

The 4 Steps

1. Get into Google Analytics - Behaviour > Site Content > All Pages > Type '/blog' in the search bar (assuming you have this) > Sort by Page Views

Identify your top-performing content & compare it against the last quarter. Consolidate content that experienced a drop in traffic and evaluate if they are still relevant and aligned with your objectives.

2. Review and update key information.

It’s best practice to use statistics within the last 2-3 years. Update your external/internal links, statements, and statistics if there is new information. Or remove them if you’re able to.

3. Run through your targeted keywords for each article again.

Search queries change over time and so does their search volume. There is no value in ranking for keywords that no longer have a significant number of searches.

Run your targeted keywords through 3rd party tools like SERanking or SEMrush and check. If there are other keywords with higher search volume and high intent, consider making a switch.

4. Include the date when it was updated.

Ever clicked into an article and the first thing you see is ‘Published 16/01/2014’?

How likely are you going to stay on and read it?

That’s what we are trying to avoid by indicating the updated date.

Although dwell time is not a ranking factor mentioned explicitly by Google, improving this metric will lead to better page quality. Pages that create high-quality content with great user experience are more likely to rank higher on search results.

I hope this article added enough value for you today. Till the next one!