Teach Your Old Blog New Tricks: How to Update Your Content for SEO (plus, examples and results)

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Please take a few minutes for this short blogging survey.

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Thank you so much for this. It means a lot to us. It really does.

Andy

And now, on with our regularly scheduled program...

You wrote it years ago. It did well at the time. People liked it …they clicked and opened, commented and shared. But your readers moved on. And you never looked back.

Maybe it’s time to revisit that old blog post, update it and promote it again.

Updating old blog posts has been one of the most effective SEO strategies we’ve found.

We’re not the only ones.

For the past four years, we’ve included this question in our?annual blogger survey (the one we mentioned above)?“Is it part of your strategy to update old articles?”?Every year, more bloggers answer?yes.

The bloggers that update past content are roughly 20% more likely to report “strong results” from content marketing. It’s a powerful strategy for any content marketing program.

Why is it so effective to update old articles?

There are at least five reasons to update an old post then write something new:

1. The topic has been vetted?because you have data from the first version
2. It’s faster to make?because some of the research is already done
3. It’s higher quality?because the updated article goes deeper into the topics
4. It’s easier to promote?in social media because you’ll know just who to share it with
5. It may rank higher?in search because the URL may already have backlinks and authority.

In other words,?you’ll get better results with less effort.?

Here is our guide for updating content. We’ll show you which posts to revisit, how to update them and finally how to promote updated content. By the time you get to the examples below, it will already be obvious just now effective this content strategy can be.

Which blog posts should you update?

This works well if you’ve been blogging for a while. You have 100+ published articles. You’ve been checking Analytics and you know that some blog posts are getting 10x the results of others.

Our goal is to push more articles into that 10x results category. Certain types of articles have the best opportunities to become big winners:

1. Articles that almost rank high. They could become traffic magnets with a little boost.
2. Articles that are already high ranking traffic magnets, but at risk of being surpassed by rivals.
3. Articles that created a lot of buzz?when they were first published
4. Research articles?that have gone out of date

Two of these are specific SEO opportunities, easily discoverable through?our 8-step content marketing audit.

Update articles that almost rank high

You probably have some older content that ranks high …on page two of Google. Find them, improve them and within a few days, they’ll likely bump up to page one of Google.

Unlike?classic keyphrase research?(find phrases, create content, check rankings) this is Google telling you what phrases to target (check rankings, find phrases, improve content). It’s backwards and way more effective.

The data is in your Google Search Console (GSC) reports. You can access this report directly in GSC, in Google Analytics (if you connected them) or in any rank tracking reports in your SEO tool of choice.

1. In Analytics, go to the Acquisition > Search Console > Queries report.
2. Choose a date range that gives you enough data for analysis, usually several months.
3. Create an advanced filter to show only queries for which you don’t already rank high: Include?queries for which the?average position?in search results is?greater than 10. Here’s what it will look like.

The report will now show you the best SEO opportunities, each of which you can capture by updating the associated page.

Caution ????Before updating a page,?find all the phrases that page ranks for. You need to know if it’s already ranking even higher for other phrases. You don’t want to accidentally de-optimize it by making it less relevant for other high ranking phrases. We’re here to improve quality and rankings, not change keyword targeting.

Update articles that rank well but are starting to slip

This is the second big SEO opportunity. There are two ways to find them. The first is traffic. Just check changes in traffic over time to any page in the Behavior > Site Content > All Pages report.

That’s fine, but not ideal. That traffic may not be from search and those pages aren’t necessarily landing pages. Far better to go to Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages report, add a segment to see just Organic Traffic and then compare traffic to a previous period.

If you like building reports, you can set this up in Google Data Studio, which is easier to scan. I called my report an “Early Warning System.” It shows which landing pages have declining traffic from search month-over-month.

Another way to monitor changes in rankings is with SEO software, such as SEMrush or Moz. These aren’t free, but they’ll give you a report that you won’t find in Analytics or Search Console:?changes in rankings for specific keywords over time.?

Here’s what it looks like:

Now that we know exactly which articles need a little love, and which posts to update for SEO impact it’s time to start improving them.

How to update old blog posts for SEO and higher rankings

There are two approaches to updating blog articles, one small and one big. Some bloggers use a light touch and simply update the headline and a few sections. Others go big and actually rewrite the entire post.

We typically take the second approach. Go big and completely overhaul the article.

To take the blog post to the next level, we step back and look at the topic again.

• Is there new research on this topic?
• Has our thinking or approach changed?
• Do we have new examples to include?
• Which visuals could best support this content?
• What influencers should we collaborate with?

In the end, some sentences and sections will be kept, but it’s really a rewrite. The?process for blogging?is similar to that of any new article, from researching the keyphrase research to designing the final image. Here’s our typical process looks like minute-by-minute.

For us, updating content is time intensive. Often the new version takes more time to write than the original.

What is URL Recycling?

By writing a new article where an old article used to live, you are basically recycling the original URL. If that URL has been linked to from other websites, you are leveraging the existing authority of that page, which could be substantial.

You can check to see if a page has been linked to using Google Search Console, which shows you the number of domains that link to a given page.

Or you can use SEO software to count the links and estimate the authority of that page. This should give you a better idea of the ranking potential.

Either way, by reusing an old URL, you can target keyphrases that would otherwise be out of reach for a new post.?The URL is “pre-authorized” to rank well?if it has been linked to by other websites. The foundation is in place to build higher.

Next steps? They're right here, in the full article...

Bonus! This post also shows the ranking and traffic impact of these updates with examples like this one. Enjoy!