Is it time your website had a refresh? If you’ve got content that’s more than 18 months old, then yes, it’s time you remastered it to regain lost search traffic and rankings!
Start with a site audit to see which pieces need work. Then get creative, adding new information or new media or reworking pieces entirely! Of course, every piece won’t need to be totally rewritten, but you should at least remove outdated references, and embellish and expand content where possible. Once you have finished refreshing your content, you can go ahead and push it out to your social media feeds.
Audit Your Content
Before you begin auditing your content, you need to know where you stand. Newer pieces of content probably don’t need to be refreshed yet – it usually takes about 12 to 18 months for a piece of content to reach its peak search traffic and begin to fall off.
Instead, look at older pieces of content, even those that are evergreen or seasonal. You don’t just want to audit pieces whose traffic is declining, but those whose conversion rate is falling even if traffic rates are remaining the same. There’s not much point in getting a lot of traffic from search if none of those viewers are buying anything.
You will want to prioritize content that can be refreshed quickly because it doesn’t need much work. Pieces that need some light rewriting or copy editing and proofreading can be refreshed first, and you can see a significant increase in traffic and conversions for comparatively minimal work.
Next, look at content that saw its peak traffic at least six months ago. Use Google Analytics to determine which articles peaked in the past. If you have multiple years’ worth of content, make sure to check the traffic on content that is years old and hasn’t been refreshed. You’ll probably see plenty of room for improvement.
Finally, decide what seasonal and evergreen pieces need to be refreshed. Zero in on ones with outdated references, old statistics, and outdated information, as well as those that could be easily expanded upon or embellished with videos, images, or other visuals.
Remove Old References
Refresh evergreen and seasonal content by removing outdated references, taking out old statistics and replacing them with new relevant ones, and fixing broken links. You can also link to other pieces that you have created since publishing the piece you’re refreshing, and make sure that some of those pieces link back to it, too. You should refresh seasonal content in plenty of time for the season in question to begin.
Christmas content, for example, should be refreshed by November.
Get Creative with Media
You can refresh content by adding new elements that make it stand out more. Use all the media at your disposal. Add images or videos. Charts, widgets, photos, call-outs, or interactive elements can all breathe new life into your content. It can be worth working with a marketing company on these kinds of multimedia elements, as many smaller marketing firms now offer SEO services as resellers.
Add New Content
One way to refresh old content is to add new text to the piece. Perhaps there have been new developments in the field since the topic was originally posted about, or maybe you failed to mention an interesting subtopic that you could add in now. Try adding personal anecdotes or quotes. The point is to offer something new to the reader.
Rework Old Content into New Pieces
Reworking old content into new content usually isn’t as onerous as writing it from scratch, and it can be a good way to show search engines that your content is fresh and relevant. Rework a single blog post into a series of blog posts. Replace the written content with a video about the topic or an infographic. Add a recorded podcast about the topic to your content. Viewers are increasingly interested in different kinds of content, so this can be a great way to improve rankings for content that’s performing well, but not quite as well as it should.
Promote Refreshed Content Again
Of course, you have to promote your content all over again once you have refreshed it. Don’t forget to share your refreshed content on social media and with relevant people who also contributed to it, even if just in the form of a quote or as a resource. Promoting your content will create more backlinks and increase visibility for it.
Is your website in need of a content refresh? If it’s time, it’s time, but rest assured that a content refresh is worth the trouble. Refreshing content can restore its old search rankings, and its old conversion rates.
