Updating Content for SEO: How to Teach Your Old Blog New Tricks (plus, 3 examples with ranking data)

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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:?“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 how 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 Research articles?that have gone out of date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.

Erin Balsa

THE PREDICTIVE INDEX

“Start by doing a content audit. This will help you prioritize which pieces of content to update and optimize vs. which to leave alone, redirect or kill. I like to optimize blogs that have 10 or more backlinks going to them, blogs that are ranking (but not on page one) for high-value keywords, and blogs that get a ton of traffic but low time on page and low goal completions.”

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:
4. 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.

Continue to the full article.