How to Update Old Content for Better SEO Results (Content Refresh Guide)

Unlike diamonds, content isn’t forever.

Left untouched, it’ll eventually fall out of favor.

Heck, it may have never reached the heights you thought it would.

The solution? A solid content refresh strategy.

Done right, it’ll set your content up for a whole new wave of success.

Higher rankings, increased traffic, and more conversions.

Here’s how to go about it 👇

How to Refresh Old Content for Better SEO Results

A piece of content goes through four different stages called the content lifecycle:

1. Early Traction: Freshly published content begins to gain some attention and traffic.
2. Growth: The content is gaining momentum, attracting more visitors and engagement.
3. Peak: The content peaks, generating the most traffic and engagement it ever has.
4. Decay: The content declines in performance, attracting less traffic and engagement.

   

What’s behind content decay? The main culprits are:

1. Shifts in consumer preferences may cause some content to fall out of favor.
2. If your content doesn’t align with the current search intent, it might lose its relevance and visibility.
3. If your competitors are publishing content that’s more detailed or relevant to search engine user searchers, naturally, that content will receive more engagement and climb its way to the top of the SERPs.
4. If your content contains outdated information, statistics, or links, it can lose its relevance and value to your audience (and to Google).
5. Keyword cannibalization—creating multiple pieces of content that target the same keyword and, as a result, compete against one another—also causes content decay.
6. Google’s tastes for content change; they roll out an algorithm update, and if your content doesn’t meet the search engines’ new preferences, your content may not perform like it used to.

1. Identifying Content to Update

So you can catch decay before it spins out of control, start by analyzing a site’s content to identify the best candidates for a refresh. The best approach is to look at the website’s analytics data, performance metrics, content age, and overall content quality.

Google Analytics and Google Search Console are your best friends here. Using these tools, look at metrics like:

• • Pageviews: How many people are visiting the page?
  • Average position: What position is a page in search results for specific keywords?

• Average CTR:  How often are people clicking on your page’s link in the search results?

• Average engagement time: How long are people spending on the page?
• Event count: Are people taking your desired action on the page?

If these page metrics are trending in the wrong direction, it’s a sign the page needs a refresh.

Another quick and easy way to identify decaying content is to use a tool like Ahrefs. Head to the Top pages report, scroll down the page, and cast your eye over the positions column. Here Ahrefs highlights the position movement of your top-performing web pages.

As you can see here, a few of our pages have dropped a position or two, which is nothing dramatic so we’ll probably leave things be for the moment. But if these drops were 10 positions or more, it would be a sign that we need to revisit the page and perhaps give it a little spruce up.

Google loves fresh content, after all.

Also, keep in mind that while evergreen content can remain relevant for years, some topics require more frequent updates. Consider the nature of your content and whether it needs a refresh based on its age and relevance to current trends and information.

2. Content Audit Process

Now that we’ve wrapped our heads around how to identify content that needs a refresh, where to next? A content audit. Audits happen in three parts for content updates, starting with a technical review.

1. Technical Review

Here are a few key areas to focus on:

• Link Health: When refreshing your content, take the opportunity to check all internal and external links. Use a tool like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs to identify any broken or outdated links. Also, review your existing links to ensure they’re still pointing to relevant and authoritative sources.
• Meta Data: Make sure to revisit your title tags and meta descriptions. Do they accurately reflect the updated content? Do they include relevant keywords? Use tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to analyze your competitors’ meta descriptions and identify opportunities to stand out in the search results.
• Image Optimization: Take a look at your images, too. Are they optimized for web performance? Are they relevant to the updated content?
• Site Speed: Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or Pingdom to analyze your content’s speed and identify any bottlenecks.

2. Content Quality Check

On to content quality. Ask yourself:

• Is this content still relevant and informative?
• Does it still align with search intent and target audience?
• Is it helpful and up to date?
• Does it achieve our business goals?

Analyzing your content from a critical perspective allows you to quickly identify areas for improvement and is a valuable resource for your audience.

Specifically, here’s what to consider:

• Accuracy and Relevance: If your content is riddled with errors or irrelevant to your audience, it’s going to damage your credibility and drive visitors away.
• Clarity and Conciseness: Make sure your content is clear, concise, and easy to understand. Use simple language, short sentences, and avoid technical terms that might confuse your audience.
• Engagement and Style: Consider your target audience and their preferences. Are they looking for a formal and professional tone or a more casual and playful approach?
• Structure and Formatting: Use headings, subheadings, bullet points, and visuals to break up your text and guide the reader through your ideas.

3. Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis seeks to understand what your rivals are doing well (and where they’re falling short) so you can identify opportunities to differentiate yourself and offer something even better to your audience.

Here’s how to conduct a competitor analysis that will give you a competitive edge:

1. Start by identifying the websites that are competing for the same audience and keywords as you. These are the sites that you need to keep a close eye on. An SEO tool like Ahrefs makes identifying your competitors easy. Using their Site Explorer tool, enter a site’s URL, scroll down to Top Organic Competitors, and Ahrefs will show your closest competitors.
2. Next to each competitor’s URL, click on the downward pointing arrow and click Top pages. Scroll down the page, and under the column Content changes, uncover how they’ve updated each page over time. Ahrefs indicate whether the changes have been minor, moderate, or major. Click on the green boxes, and Ahrefs will show you the exact changes that have been made and when they were made.

   

3. Use this information to answer: What updates are working? Where are they falling short? Are there any gaps in their content or opportunities to provide more value or a different perspective? How often are they updating their content?

   
   

Image source: Ahrefs.

3. Refresh Strategy

You’ve identified your outdated content and given it a thorough checkup. Now, it’s time to strategize:

Identify the Type of Refresh Needed

Not all content needs the same level of attention. Some might just need a quick touch-up, while others might need a complete overhaul.

Start by assessing the current state of your content and identifying the type of refresh needed. Does it need minor updates, like fixing broken links and adding new information? Or does it require a complete rewrite, restructuring, and re-optimization?

Wrapping your head around what’s involved will help you determine where to allocate your resources and time.

Expand Your Content

Content expansion is about adding more meat to the bones, providing more value to your audience, and reshaping your existing content in a way that it becomes the go-to resource for your topic.

What does this look like? You could add new sections, update outdated information, incorporate current trends, and even expand on existing subtopics to provide a more in-depth analysis.

Stay Fresh With Current Trends

New trends, technologies, and information emerge fast. If your content is stuck in the past, it’s not exactly going to make a good impression.

Incorporating current trends into your content will make it feel relevant, up-to-date, and engaging. You could add new data, examples, and case studies or even just update your language and tone to reflect current trends.

Align With Search Intent

Take a moment to revisit the search intent behind your target keywords. Has the intent changed since you first created the content? Are people looking for different types of information or solutions? If so, adjust your content accordingly to be absolutely sure you’re nailing relevance and offering value to your audience.

4. Implementation Steps

Now, to the refreshing:

Content Updates

Start by implementing the content updates you identified in your audit. Your process could involve adding new information, images, and insights to revise outdated content and improve the overall flow and readability.

As an example, to the below web page, we added some helpful images that we felt would help our readers grasp stickier concepts. While these changes weren’t dramatic, it seems to have done the trick. The page has jumped 10 spots on the SERPs and brought more eyes to one of our main service offerings: link-building.

Technical Fixes

Remember that technical review we talked about earlier? Now’s the time to put them into action. Fix those broken links, optimize those images, and make sure your website is technically sound.

For example, if you found broken links in your old content, you’d redirect those to the correct pages. Or, if your images were slowing down your page speed, you would resize and compress them.

Republishing Best Practices

Once you’ve made all the necessary updates, it’s time to republish your content. Just don’t go hitting the “publish” button and assume everything’s fine and dandy. Take a moment to review your content one last time and make sure everything is in order.

Also, when republishing, make sure to update the publication date to reflect the freshness of the content. By doing so, you’re signaling to both users and search engines that the content is up-to-date and relevant.

You might even consider adding a note at the beginning or end of the content mentioning that it has been updated and highlighting the key changes or additions.

And one more thing: don’t be afraid to prune your content. If you have content that’s outdated, irrelevant, or just plain bad, delete it.

Conclusion and Next Steps

Pat yourself on the back. You’re now officially equipped to revitalize your old content.

If you need a little helping hand, don’t forget that our team of expert SEOs and content strategists are here, waiting and ready to offer their help whenever you need it.

👉 Simply head over to our SEO services page, and let’s get that content of yours ranking. 👈