10 SEO Tips For Updating Past Content
You don’t always get things right the first time, and that’s okay. Half the battle of SEO is just showing up, right? But as Kevin Costner says in Untouchables, “Many things are half the battle, losing is half the battle. Let’s think about what’s the whole battle.” Updating past content for SEO is part of that whole battle.
For content creators, churning out new pieces regularly is tiresome and mentally draining. No one wants to go back on a seemingly completed project, but updating content is a no-brainer when your blog isn’t performing to its optimum level.
The truth is even the most well-written articles stagnate, so going back to update your past content doesn’t necessarily translate to poor work. It’s a strategy to give your content a better SEO ranking and keep your website relevant to your audience. Today we’re talking about why updating your past content is important and giving you some tips to get started.
Why Updating Your Past Content is Important
Google loves fresh content. Updating your old posts delivers advantages like these:
Improves User Experience
Great SEO ranking doesn’t go hand in hand with awful user experience. How much time do your website’s visitors spend on your platform? Are they satisfied with their ease of navigation? What are they saying about your website?
Technology is fast changing; any good content creator should be aware of that and be able to adjust accordingly. What works today might not be effective tomorrow. Updating your website’s past content ensures that the user experience remains top-notch.
Refreshes the Published Date
Readers barely have time to go through your website; they will find any excuse to leave as soon as possible. For instance, if a user is looking for the current year’s information, they will quickly move if they notice your content was published in the previous year.
Updating your content refreshes its publication date regardless of how relevant your content is, which can be a deal maker or breaker.
Improves Your Keyword Placement
Updating your past content allows you to leverage the current URLs to go after more keywords or better place the current ones. When you curated the first article, you might have placed some keywords inappropriately or now have more information on the subject. Revisiting your already published content allows you to make amends.
Increases Click-Through Rate and SEO Ranking
An updated website with updated content increases the chances of your readers engaging with it. The more they do, the higher the chances the search engine will recognize the activities and qualify your content as relevant. This improves your website’s overall ranking.
Tips for Updating Your Past Content
The beauty of revisiting past content is you don’t have to start from scratch. However, every update you make must be meaningful. Different types of updates are available; for instance, some are unique based on your content type, while others are simple best practices that don’t rely on your website. Either way, the following tips will help you get started on both:
1. Correct Grammar and Spelling Mistakes
Every content creator has experienced this. You go through your past content and cringe with every spelling and grammar mistake. Rather than ignore these mistakes and hope your readers don’t notice, take some time to fix them.
While it’s true that grammar and spelling mistakes are not part of Google’s ranking factors, they affect your website. Such errors slow down readers or give conflicting meanings, affecting your website’s user experience. You can catch and correct these errors by taking some time to revisit and update past content.
2. Boost or Target New Keywords
Here is a situation: you have put out great content and have moved to the next project. After some time, you stumble upon keywords that you feel would be perfect for a past post. Do you write another piece?
Finding keywords that can help you achieve your goals in one sitting is not always possible. When you come across newer ones, you can update your past content to fit your current preferences rather than write fresh content. While at it, ensure your new insertions fit naturally in your content and give value to your readers.
3. Provide Answers to “Frequently Asked Questions”
After publishing your content, you expect to have “engagements.” For instance, if you asked your audience to leave their comments or suggestions, revisiting your past content allows you to go through their feedback.
At this point, you have the opportunity to address any questions or concerns that your readers may have, improving their user experience. The more people find answers on your website, the lower the bounce rates. This improves your platform’s overall SEO ranking.
4. Keep Up with Your Competitors
Keep your friends close and your “enemies” closer. Sometimes you might revisit your past content and don’t find anything to alter or update. At this point, your competitors might be your best source of inspiration. Look at their content, analyze the market trends, and observe their strategies.
- What kind of blog articles do they post?
- Are there any strongholds or weaknesses in their approach that you can use?
While you shouldn’t wage war against your industry-mates, you sure do not have to ignore their existence.
5. Scan and Remove Broken Links
It’s not strange to click on a past link and find it’s not working. Various sites undergo maintenance and might shift their content to new URLs. Revisiting and updating your past content allows you to ensure that all the links in your published content are working.
Linking to newer sources also improves the authenticity of your content. Doing this boosts your website’s user experience, minimizing bounce rates.
6. Alter the Alt Text of Your Content’s Images
Alt text not only improves accessibility to your blog but also improves your images’ SEO. By updating your alt text, you deal with the potential eye-sore for your regular readers. It’s also a chance to give your photos new, descriptive captions free from keyword stuffing.
While at it, you might also want to update your past blog’s introduction. Most readers look at the opening of your blog, and within seconds, they decide whether to continue reading or leave. If a past blog is not doing well, it might be time to alter a few things, starting with the introduction.
7. Remove or Consolidate Duplicated Content
Especially for websites with a lot of content, the chances of content duplication are fairly high. Given that you have to attend to other aspects of your business, the time you set apart for updating your past content is the best to remove or consolidate any duplicated content.
Going through every published blog to check whether it’s similar to another might be draining and time-consuming. You might work to check out some tools to help you quickly identify and fix such issues. Remember to redirect the old URLs to the new, consolidated URL destination while at it.
8. Refresh the Content
During the content creation process, most content creators approach topics from an expert’s point of view rather than the readers.’ By revisiting your past content, you can tell whether you met your readers’ demands from the engagements. If a blog is underperforming, it doesn’t satisfy your audience.
To fix this, you can choose to use another angle or perspective. You can also include a widget that can simplify things. Anything that can help refresh your content and appeal to more readers is welcome.
9. Transform Date-Specific Articles into Evergreen Articles
There is nothing wrong with date-specific articles. If anything, they gain real SEO traction within the stipulated time. However, what happens to your content when the date or year you wrote about passes? It becomes obsolete.
Fortunately, you can counter this by making your content evergreen. Especially for events that must occur annually, there is no need to limit yourself to a specific one. You can write a one-fits-all article and make small relevant changes as time passes.
10. Optimize Blog Content for SEO
More often than not, past published content rarely follow SEO best practices. New SEO trends keep emerging, so it doesn’t mean you churned out bad content. Either way, content not optimized for SEO leads to decreased search engine placement for target keywords.
You can fix this by checking areas such as:
- Your contents titles
- Meta description
- Image alt-text
- Keyword placement
How Often Should You Update Your Content?
There is no straightforward answer to this question. However, most companies prefer updating their website content semi-annually. While updating your past content can be significant for SEO, doing so regularly can show inconsistencies, making it hard for search engines to index your website.
The Key Takeaway
Updating your past content helps to improve your user experience. The more you give value to your readers, the lower the bounce rates; eventually, your website ranks better. The 10 SEO tips discussed here can help you get started and keep up with your competitors.