You have your top-performing pages that are doing really well to get the traffic and generate leads. Maybe these are the highly converting pages and the ones that get you the most qualified traffic. But it's just sitting there somewhere on your site.
Wouldn't it be great if you dust off your old content that has already proven it's worth and refurbish it to do even better?
Refurbishing an old blog or an existing content page is no easier than creating new content.
Creating new content pages for your niche is critical to capture more traffic, but while doing so, content creators miss the opportunity to get more traffic coming in from heir old blog posts.
Why refurbish old blogs?
As a human, we must stay updated, the same is with your website audience. They need to be updated about the current scenario in your industry and your niche.
There are mainly two reasons for refurbishing your old blogs and content pages. They are:
- Not to lose existing traffic to your old blogs: When a visitor lands on an old blog that ranks well but it doesn't contain relevant and fresh content, they will undoubtedly navigate away to another website that has the most current information.
- Increase traffic & visibility for your old blog posts: By updating your high-performing blogs, you can make them evergreen content pages and extend their life. Sharing it on social media platforms will give it an extra buzz.
How to refurbish old blogs?
The process of refurbishing an existing blog post or a content page can be divided into three main steps.
- Keyword research
- Content enhancement
- On-page SEO elements
Keyword Research
Keywords research isn't a new topic anymore.
Make a list of your target keywords for the blog, especially those you aim to rank for. Ensure that the keywords do not have a transactional intent, and your target keywords have blog content ranking at least in the top 10.
Then, list all the keywords for which your content is performing well (as of now). Look into your analytics to get a list of keywords your blogs are performing for. Work on your content to strengthen the context around target keywords. These are low hanging opportunities you should take advantage of.
Find out secondary target keywords: Look at your competitor's top-performing content or the top 5 results on your target keywords to help you find the secondary keywords.
Add those URLs to a competitive analysis tool to list all the keywords those blogs are ranking on. You can use keyword research tools like keyword Planner' to find out low competition keywords with high search demand.
Content Enhancement
How do you do that? You can enhance your content in the following ways:
Update content: Remove all the unwanted content from your old blogs that are not relevant now. Update your blog with fresh content. Update screenshots that have changed over time, like any stats, metrics, graph or anything else.
Add additional content: Make sure you maintain your content's keyword density through a focused content strategy.
Adding new content can include FAQs around your subject area that may interest your readers.
You can refer "people also ask" section of Google search results for reference.
Share popular questions asked by your customers/visitors to social platforms like Quora and other social media platforms.
When you type in a search query in the Google bar, you are suggested for the possible search term. These keywords have a high volume; try adding all these in your content (if they align with your industry, niche and content context).
Optimise your content for featured snippets: Use structured format while writing blog posts. Adding new content will make it lengthier, and adding information in a structured list using bullets and tables will add more value.
Maintain blog hierarchy by using heading tags such as H1, H2, H3, and so on.
On-Page SEO Elements
On-page SEO is critical for your website performance in search results, no matter if it an old content or a new one. Update meta tags and mention recent year or incorporate words like 'updated' in title or description.
Add alt tags to images that you add to refurbish content.
Link internally with your product or service pages. Also, link it with your related blogs, which are valuable for your readers.
Add external links to trusted sources and references.
Most importantly, DO NOT Change the URL. It is best to keep your URL as it is.
Remove broken links, if any.
Add schema markups like how-to, FAQs or any other schema relevant to your industry & niche.
Add relevant videos and infographics to your content and make it more attractive and shareable.
Make sure your blog and other website pages are mobile-friendly. A responsive site is preferred by your website visitors.
Once done, republish your post and mark the date to compare its performance before and after refurbishing content.
Do not forget to share it on all your social media platforms and send it across your audience & customers through newsletters.
Are we done with planning and executing the content revamping exercise?
No, not yet.
The process does not end here; you need to measure the impact of what you did in order to analyse & take credit for success.
How do You measure the performance of Refurbished Content?
Different people have different parameters of performance and define it differently. But when it comes to measuring content performance KPIs, some of the most important metrics are:
- Search Console Metrics
- SERP Position or Keyword Ranking
- Links
- Organic Conversion Rate
Search Console Metrics:
The Search Console reports in Analytics use the following metrics specific to Google Web Search data.
Impressions: As you refurbish your old content and add new pieces, it will bring added impressions. So, you must keep track of
- Keywords for which you were already ranking to measure the increase or fall.
- Keywords for which you have started to appear after refurbishing content. These are your future opportunities to expand.
Clicks: The number of clicks on your website URLs from a Google Search results page, not including clicks on paid Google Ads search results. As the high impressions and low CTR was the criteria you chose and applied to improve your clicks, the number of clicks should increase, especially when you rank on the first page between 1-10 in search results.
CTR: CTR and Impressions are directly proportional to each other. When your impressions go up, the CTR should also go up. However, there are a few things to keep in mind:
The CTR is dependent on your search ranking. So, do not expect a high CTR for keywords that you've recently started gaining impressions or where the SERP position is low.
SERP Position/Keyword Ranking:
As you keep updating your blog content with new fresh content, it would not make sense to measure rankings for the same set of keywords. It is highly recommended to study position trend before and after each update.
Links:
One of the most common ways to measure your popularity signal is to keep a number of people/websites linked to your content. It is indeed the most sought-after method, as it shows that the world wide web community is loving your content.
And, it also sends Google positive signals and hence your content ranks for relevant keywords. It is one of Google's top three ranking factors.
Organic Conversion Rate:
Each website has a different conversion definition; you better know what's yours. It could be generating leads, or to get email sign-ups or newsletter subscriptions, or to download e-book/PDFs or could be as simple as spending more time on your site.
As long as you track the goals in Google Analytics, you can measure all these criteria before and after refurbishing content.
