How You Can Refresh Your Old Content

We’ve spoken about this in videos, podcasts and even previous blogs about how important it is to ensure that you are constantly refreshing your old content so it stays relevant. But how do you do it?

If you’re clued up on SEO then you might already know about the importance of refreshing old content, but if you’re not then you need to understand why it’s incredibly valuable. If refreshed correctly, old content can be equally as valuable as new content as long as you improve your rankings by cleaning it up and making sure that Google or other search engines are indexing it correctly.

What we have is a couple of tips that will help you reinvigorate any old/stale content you have.

Examine where the traffic is coming from

Though you may want to ensure that you keep all of your content up to date, you can often achieve quick boosts by updating any old content that still ranks well. You can use traffic analysis tools such as SEMrush and then find out which old posts are still driving traffic to your site. Because these already have some traction they can be extremely quick wins. You’d want to look at:

• Updating any links to external resources and studies
• Adding any relevant subsections that create additional value for customers
• Building backlinks from your domain to other high-quality external sites
• Changing your timestamp from “Posted” to “Last Updated”

Refresh and republish old material

This at face-value can seem like quite a daunting task, but remember that full rewrites are rarely necessary. Because Google is constantly updating their quality rating guidelines, you should try to focus on any tweaks that will make your content more evergreen and informative. This could be:

• Adding more subheadings with updated information
• Reorganising the full piece of content to make it easier to find information
• Creating an executive summary to give the reader an idea on what the page has to offer for them
• Adding relevant multimedia content
• Fixing any spelling or grammar errors

Once you’ve updated the content, you should ensure that the content has a new publication date. Google prefers sites where pages are regularly updated so consistent updates signal to Google your sites continued relevance.

Update your links

Links are one of the main criteria that search engines use to ensure that your pages are indexed correctly. You’ll want to go through your own content and clean out any broken or defective links and update any old ones.

First you want to check for any broken links and the best way to do this is by using the broken link checker add-on for Chrome which helps find broken links on your page. You can then choose whether or not you want to replace it or remove it altogether.

Second, you should always look at updating outdated links or adding any new ones where relevant. If they’re outdated, link to a more relevant article or news story. If there’s a chance for new links, insert them in but only if they’re relevant to the article.

Following these few areas can help you understand the basics of what’s required when refreshing your old content. Don’t just think about your new content and making that as good as it can be, think about everything, old and new and make sure you’re making the most of everything.