Did you know that old and outdated website content can negatively impact your search engine rankings and traffic? To stay competitive, it’s important to regularly audit and refresh existing content to keep it relevant, valuable and engaging for your target audience. Updating old content not only improves the user experience on your site, but also signals to search engines like Google that your pages are active and worth ranking highly. This article will explore proven strategies on how to update old content to boost your SEO rankings.
Conduct a Content Audit
The first step in how to update old content is to conduct a thorough audit of all content on your website. This allows you to identify and prioritise pages that are most in need of an update.
- Take inventory of all blog posts, product pages, service pages, and other site content.
- Review page analytics to see which pieces of content are underperforming. Flag these for updating.
- Assess top-ranking pages and determine if the content is still relevant, accurate and well-structured.
- Check for grammatical errors, broken links, outdated information, etc.
- Look for thin content that needs to be bulked up and improved.
Conducting a content audit gives you a bird’s eye view of content gaps and opportunities, so you can focus your efforts accordingly.
Improve Page Relevancy
A top priority is updating old pages to make them more relevant for your target keywords and audience. Here are some tips:
- Rewrite titles and headers to better reflect the focus of the page. Use your primary keywords where it makes sense.
- Expand thin content by adding more useful information, data, examples etc. Aim for at least 2000+ words if possible.
- Update statistics, facts, references or case studies to more recent ones.
- Review page focus – does it still align with your best-performing content and business goals?
- Add related keywords naturally throughout the content where relevant.
- Include updated images, infographics, videos etc. Visuals help reinforce page relevance.
Improving relevancy signals search engines that your page offers authoritative information on the topic.
Optimise Page Structure
Proper on-page SEO structure helps highlight your most important content. When updating old pages:
- Break up large blocks of text with subheadings using your target keywords.
- Ensure headings logically flow in the proper outline order.
- Include keyword-rich introduction and conclusion paragraphs.
- Use bullet points and numbered lists for easy scanning.
- Insert links to related content where relevant.
- Bold key terminology and phrases.
Optimising page structure allows search engines to better crawl and index your content.
Freshen Up the Design
While design aesthetic alone won’t directly improve SEO, a modern and consistent look and feel across your site enhances user experience. When refreshing old content, consider:
- Updated page layouts and templates for better navigation and scanning.
- New original images and graphics related to the topic.
- Infographics to help visualise data.
- Easy-to-read fonts and colour schemes.
- Consistent branded headers, footers and sidebars.
An outdated design can detract from your content. Freshening up visual elements helps content stand out.
Promote and Monitor Performance
Once you update old content, don’t forget to:
- Index and submit URLs in Google Search Console.
- Promote content through social media, email newsletters, etc.
- Insert internal links across the website to boost page visits.
- Review analytics regularly to see if pages are gaining traffic.
- Monitor rankings monthly to check for improvements.
- Request backlinks from other reputable websites.
Promoting refreshed content and monitoring its impact will help you identify what strategies work best to boost your SEO.
Outsource for Ongoing Content Updates
For businesses without the bandwidth to continually refresh their website content, partnering with a white label content writing agency is an efficient way to keep your site updated. Agencies like Ink Elves can handle content audits, writing, optimisation, promotion, and performance tracking. By renewing your content on an ongoing basis, your pages stay relevant, which positively impacts SEO rankings over time.
Now you know how to update old content, it’s important to remember that updating outdated or underperforming content should be an ongoing initiative as part of your overall SEO strategy. Following the steps in this guide will help boost your content quality and search engine rankings organically over time. If you need assistance auditing and refreshing your website content, our expert white label content agency can help. Contact us today for more information on optimising your old content.