Update Your Old Content For Better SEO - Get More Traffic!

byIvanBroz

15.6K followers

4 years ago

Hey guys and gals, I hope you're doing great.

Today, I wanna quickly talk about a valuable lesson I learned over the last few months that I think is going to benefit anyone who's going to apply what I'm about to share.

We're all in a game of getting more traffic to out sites/businesses, right?

With more traffic comes more revenue opportunities so it goes without saying that the more traffic you get to your site to more money you can make eventually.

And we all have the same goal. That is to rank our posts/reviews as higher as possible.

So today, I will share something that I believe everyone should apply to their blogging strategy to get better rankings and more traffic.

It's called: UPDATING YOUR OLD POSTS.

See, your work isn't done once you hit that publish button.

Once you publish a post it will take a few months up to a year for that one piece of content to reach it's highest ranking in SERP if you just leave it alone.

It might get position #9 and that's all it will ever get if you don't update it.

But if you update your post regularly, it will climb the SERP and get even better ranking than it's got in the first place.

You can easily move your post from, let's say position #9 to #3 if you update it.

And I'm sure you're aware that position #3 will bring much more traffic than #9, right?

But if you don't update it at all, your ranking will decrease over time. You could lose that 9th position easily.

Why is that?

The thing is, Google has this metric called Freshness Score.

Meaning, the fresher your content, the better your rankings. Simple and plain.

A site that updates content regularly will send better freshness signals to Google than a site that never updates old content.

And Google will give more attention to sites that take care to update and refresh an old piece of content over sites that don't do so.

And if you update your old content regularly, you'll send signals to Google that your content is fresh and updated and it will, in turn, take it into consideration for new ranking.

If this sounds boring, here's another way of telling how this works.

For example, I created a list with all my posts and their positions in SERP.

Then, I started with this process of refreshing and updating my old posts that I'm going to share at the bottom of this post, and lo and behold!

Almost all updated posts moved for 3-5 positions toward the top.

A post that was ranked 5th for a keyword, after update climbed to 2nd position.

A post that was ranked 3rd for a keyword, after update got 1st position.

A post that was ranked 15th for a keyword, after update got 8th position

These are just a few examples.

As I said, almost every single post got new and better ranking after the update and with new and better rankings came more traffic!

And the thing is, these posts were holding their old position for months and months.

In a matter of a few weeks, all of them climbed the SERP for a few positions after the update.

And it literally takes 15-30 minutes to update an old blog post wherein comparison, it takes 2-3 hours to create a new one.

So my advice here is to work smarter not harder.

You can pump new content daily and have 1000 posts on your site, but they will lose their freshness and rankings over time and will decrease.

But if you update them regularly, they will keep their positions longer and even climb in SERP!

In other words, you'll get the most out of each post if you UPDATE it at least once per year!

This is something that all authority blogs you see in SERP in your respected niche are doing.

Some blogs have only 50 posts and they ranked them all at the top of SERP.

They did so by updating those posts continually making them better each time using the process I'll describe below now.

Universal Process For Updating Your Old Posts For Better Rankings

Keep in mind that these strategies worked for me but I didn't invent them.

I've read countless blogs on this topic and watched hours of YouTube videos to extract the essence of the process.

So without any further ado, here's what I suggest you to do to get new and better rankings.

Also, if your site is just getting started, focus on creating content first and ignore updating until you get at least 100 posts on your site.

I suggest this process to blogs that are one year old and older and have at least 100 posts written.

Prep-work:

1.) Create a list of your posts and determine their position. You can use Google Search Console to get a list of your top-performing posts (Google it.)

2.) Sort your posts by their position from best to lowest rankings and focus on those that have the best rankings first.

3.) Do keyword research for each post and exclude those with low-potential and keep those that could bring the most traffic and are the most relevant to your niche.

Process of updating a single blog post for a better SEO:

1.) Make sure your content is relevant to the search query and matches the search intent. Open at least 3-5 posts in Google that hold top positions, read or scan them and match their intent.

2.) Update the old post by adding more relevant content and by deleting "filler" content. Feel free to add at least 300 new words to your piece and be relevant.

3.) Make sure you have used a keyword you want to rank enough times. Use Yoast SEO plugin to determine perfect keyword density. Don't stuff your content with keywords.

4.) Fix post structure by adding more headings if needed to make the post easier to consume by the reader.

5.) Add more media if needed. (Images and videos) But don't go overboard. Be moderate.

6.) Fix all grammar, punctuation and spelling mistakes.

7.) Optimize your post for better conversions. Use more call-to-actions to direct your traffic to your sales page, review, or whichever page you want them to go.

8.) Make sure to use internal linking as well. In other words, link to your old posts whenever it feels right. Don't go overboard.

9.) Use outbound links to link your content to authority sites as well (Wikipedia, and top players in your niche). Don't go overboard.

10.) If the post is 6 months old or older, edit the publish date. It's located in the top right corner withing your WP dashboard.

11.) Publish an updated post.

12.) Share and promote your post on all your social media.

13.) Get new and fresh comments.

14) If you can, try to get a few backlinks as well.

And that's it, guys!

I use exactly the same process described above to update my old content and I've seen significant improvement so far.

As a matter of fact, I decided to publish new content less often and focus more on updating my old content (I have almost 400 posts/reviews published).

However, I will not neglect to create fresh content. My aim is to publish at least 3-5 new posts per week and update at least 10 along the way.

I believe this is a great strategy.

In fact, I'm sure it is because it's been working very well for me so far.

Thanks for reading, guys!

I hope some of you will use these steps and tips and I hope they will work for you as good as they were for me...

Have a nice one!

Ivan :)