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Writing content for a page or post takes a lot of time, but it can provide your website with a nice boost in traffic. Left unattended, you’ll watch your once epic article fail to drive the traffic it once did. The good news is that if you update your website content, you will increase relevancy, providing you with better search rankings and increasing traffic to your website. Let’s update your content and BOOST your 1st-page search results!
Your content was good! Why is it no longer generating traffic? There are a few reasons why this might be happening. Either the new kid on the block has written more appealing content to search engines or your content is no longer answering users’ queries. Ultimately, what we are trying to do is craft our content to match users’ search terms (keywords) and intent. You might even find your updated website content brings in more traffic than your old content ever did!
Follow these handy steps to improve your results!
Google Search Console and Google Analytics are your best friends when it comes to identifying outdated content. You’re looking for pages that are no longer getting found in searches and are therefore not helping you drive conversions.
In the above (Google Analytics 4) example, we can see that our Vimeo OTT portfolio piece is getting less traffic compared to last year and could use a revision! The backlink I added up above will probably help as well! 😉
Run searches and do keyword research to figure out what terms users are now searching. Search relevancy is the term for matching your keywords to users’ searches. Could your keywords be more relevant to users’ searches?
Search Terms: search terms change, lingo evolves, and branding changes. You have to speak your target user group’s language. Let’s say, for example, you have a guitar blog and you wrote an article about your collection of Fender Stratocasters. Time has passed, and that article no longer ranks. You do some research and determine that users are no longer searching for “Fender Stratocasters”, but they are now searching for “Strats”. This might be a lingo or branding change, but it’s something you need to be aware of! So you change your keywords to include “Strats” and notice a small boost in rankings.
Search Intent: like search terms, search intent evolves. The internet is constantly growing, and new articles are created every minute. You’re once great “Fender Stratocaster” has been buried in the depths of content. Specifically, more relevant content. You do some keyword research and learn that long-tail keywords provide something short-tail keywords do not. Intent. Search intent describes the purpose of an online search. Users’ search intent usually falls under one of these categories
Armed with this information you update your page title to “My Collection of 1960-1970 Vintage Strats” hoping to match the search intent of fellow collectors. For more information on search intent check out this SEMRush post!
Is your content still accurate? Is your content relevant? Does it match the search intent indicated by your long-tail keywords? If you answered “no” to any of the above questions then it’s your duty to update that content! Check your content for spelling or grammatical errors. Are your sentences short? Is your content easy to read and understand? Remember, you are writing for your audience, not yourself. Ensure your content provides good direction and is easy to understand.
Broken links indicate to your users that your content may be out-of-date and unmaintained. This hurts SEO by affecting metrics like bounce rate and time on site. Ensure the page you are linking is still relevant to your content and up to date. If it is not, then you need to find another destination to link to. Remember, the better user experience you provide for you users, the better you will rank.
Do your images still provide accurate information? Are they relevant to your updated content? If your answer is yes to these questions ask yourself if your images make your post feel outdated. Design standards change, if you’re still using the design standards of the last decade you’re sending a signal to your audience that the content may also be updated. Ensure your images provide accurate information, are relevant to your updated content and match modern design standards.
Meta information and image alt tags provide descriptive information about your page, post or image content to search engines and tools that help with accessibility. Make sure these descriptions and tags are relevant to your blog updates!
Search engines and users love video content! Adding video content to your pages and posts provides you with another opportunity to reach your audience through search. Video content also enhances the usability of your page. Some users would simply prefer to watch a video than read your content.
Using schema markup on your website provides additional information to help search engines understand what your content is about. Using schema provides you with more opportunities to be featured in search results (Rich snippets) and enables your website to be included in voice search results. Plugins like Yoast and Rank Math make schema entry much easier. Ensure you are using the correct schema to help your content be found by search engines!
Now that you have updated your page, image and video content ask yourself these questions Does my URL still make sense and are my keywords included in my URL. If the answer is no to either of these questions, you should update your URL or permalink. Make sure you redirect your old URL to your new URL.
Sometimes content shouldn’t be updated. Perhaps the old content is no longer accurate and new content should be created to provide current information. When this happens it is important to create a redirect to direct users to relevant, current content. This process also helps Search Engines index the new content. If you forget to implement redirects, you can lose search engine rankings and end up with disappointed users.
Need help? We offer content writing services! Contact us today to chat about how we can help update your website content.
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