Remove and Improve: The Benefits of Updating Old Blog Content

Why You Should Improve Old Content Instead of Creating New Posts

Have you ever seen one of those hoarder shows? The ones where the hosts get invited to a person's house and the minute they step inside, they find a room full of junk? At one point of the show, you might have thought, “why don't they just get rid of those old things?”
That question is completely valid. But did you know that you might also have the same problem with your website's content?
Think about it: when was the last time you went to your website's blog and browsed through your old posts? If it's been a while, look now. You'll probably see articles written five years ago. If that's the case, it's time to stop hoarding those posts and clean your content up. It’s one of the best ways you can improve your SEO campaign.

The Harm of Content Hoarding

One of the most important facts in digital marketing is “Content is King.” This basically means that the success of a website largely depends on having quality content, especially if you're an SEO company. Take note of the keyword “quality.” This means that your blogs must answer the questions of users.
Let's say someone Googled "latest Google algorithm updates." The results in SERPs often show the date when an article is posted. If your content is optimized, you might pop up on results, but if users see that the article was from 2017, well...that’s not the “latest” anymore, is it?
Your old content might have been useful to users once, but if it’s outdated, people are going to skip right over it. This leads to lower click-through rates and/or higher bounce rates, which will hurt your site’s authority with search engines.
So, what do you do with all those old blog posts?

Cleaning Your Content

If you have tons of old content sitting idly and not giving you traffic, you have to start cleaning that up. You can do this in two ways: by deleting some of the old pieces and improving the others.
Old posts that aren’t well optimized, do not have relevant links, and simply don’t give value to readers should be deleted. Meanwhile, content that can be improved with new ideas, updates, or revisions can stay. This is especially applicable to industry news and forecasts.
You can also tell whether you should delete or improve old articles by looking at the traffic they’ve received. The more reads, the better. It’s one of the best signs that your content is good, albeit outdated.

How to Dust Off Your Old Content

Once you have candidates for improvement, start doing the following to freshen up your old content:

• Optimize Your Content

If an old blog post doesn’t have relevant keywords that you want to rank for, update the text in a way that will allow you to insert keywords smoothly. In addition, update the meta title and description.

• Remove and Replace Broken Links

Some of the links you used in an old article may not be working anymore. Find them and replace them with better, more authoritative ones. This makes your content look more valuable to users and search engines.

• Add Relevant Media

Pictures, infographics, and videos make your content more interesting. They’re a good way to break up large chunks of while also allowing your users to engage with your content.

• Share and Promote Your Content

Now that your old post is updated, you can start promoting it like it’s fresh and new, generating traffic to your website.
Sometimes, you don’t have to go completely out of your way to boost your SEO strategies. Simply working with what you already have—old blogs—and improving them can be an easy way to increase traffic to your site and improve its ranking on search engines.