Offering blog content on your website is a great way to engage customers, and become a trusted source of information in your field of expertise. 

But did you know that in order to make blog content work for your brand, you don’t necessarily have to come up with fresh, new pieces every month? In fact, it’s possible to generate even more results, by improving or refreshing content that’s already been published.

Keep reading as we share our best advice on how to get old content working for your brand in new and meaningful ways! 

Why is it important to update old content?

If you’ve been investing in blog content for a good amount of time, it’s likely that you have articles that haven’t been touched in multiple years. Target customers could be visiting them regularly, but out-of-date blogs that don’t reflect the current landscape aren’t very helpful, and can put a dent in even the best content marketing strategies. 

But that’s not the only reason to lean into a refresh. Revamping old content can: 

• Result in more backlinks - No external site wants to link to outdated content, so updating old blogs will result in more traffic.

• Build reader loyalty - Potential customers notice out-of-date content. Staying on top of the latest trends within your market assures customers that you’re at the forefront of information within your field, building brand trust and loyalty.

• Support SEO best practices - Reviewing old content and bringing them up to modern day standards, is a great way to make sure they’re SEO-friendly.

How do I know which content to refresh?

We understand that sifting through a backlog of blog articles takes time and resources. That’s why we suggest working with your digital marketing agency to create a table that can help organize blog content, and highlight which ones are performing well so that you can prioritize what to refresh.  Here’s an example:

We encourage clients to focus on refreshing the highest performing articles in each of the above three categories. Let’s break them down:

Organic Sessions 

Blog articles drive organic traffic. High performing content in this category indicates that users are visiting it on a regular basis, and updating it to reflect the most up-to-date data can turn regular readers into trusted customers. 

Linking Sites 

This category represents external sites that are linking back to the original blog post. Inbound links from other sites help make an article URL more authoritative, and a blog article with inbound links is more likely to make it to the top of the search results. Prioritize improving high performing articles in this category. 

Keyword Impressions. 

It’s a good idea to concentrate on improving blog articles that could rank highly for search impressions. Spending time updating an article with 17k keyword impressions is much more effective than spending time on one with under 500.

Overall, remember that old content is not necessarily less valuable content. We simply recommend taking the time to look at the metrics of your blogs’ performances, so that you can strategize and edit only the most relevant content. 

How do I update old blog posts for SEO and higher rankings?

Here are some tried and true steps to take when refreshing outdated content when you’re aiming to optimize SEO and get higher rankings: 

1. Update only when necessary - Don’t update articles just for the sake of making them fresh. If there haven’t been any significant market changes worth noting in an article, leave it as it is.
2. Do your own research - Search for the article’s topic, and see if Google comes up with a supplementary block of questions that people often ask about the same topic. Update your article accordingly, by answering those related and commonly asked questions. 
3. Update internal links - Internal links connect readers to your own content, so as you update articles, make sure that any other content with an internal link to the refreshed article gets an update as well. 
4. Include up-to-date external links - A great way to gain trust with readers is to stay on top of refreshing your external links. Include links to only the most up-to-date research studies, in order to provide readers with the most reliable information available. 
5. Avoid changing blog article URLs - We recommend keeping the URLs of older articles the same.
6. Make note of your changes - Keep readers abreast of changes that you’ve made by stating them in the introductory paragraph. Example: “this  article was updated on [insert date of article update here]. Update the title tag of the refreshed article with: “2022 Update”, or something similar. 

Conclusion

Old content can become new again, with a little bit of time and a few easy edits! Never underestimate the power of a well performing article - no matter how long it’s been up on your site! Check back with us next week for more digital marketing tips and tricks.