Creating new website content is critical, but re-creating and refurbishing existing content to add value for your customer is even more crucial.
Creating content that adds value to your business or website is not a cakewalk. And sustaining trend is even more overwhelming.
To be on top of your content marketing, you must create an ideal content plan that includes evergreen content. It would be best if you kept your content piece alive forever.
Here's why?
Why refurbish existing or old blog content?
Fresh, current and new information is what people look for when searching for something on Google, and so does Google.
You need to be relevant and latest all the time in order to be on top of search results along with many other factors that account for your rankings.
In the year 2011, Google had announced: "Freshness as a ranking influencer". According to Google, it was "designed to understand better how to differentiate the level of freshness you need" for each search term or keyword.
'Historical optimisation' is a proven strategy not only in blog traffic but also for all other content. It yields business leads if placed correctly.
Here's a classic case study from HubSpot as to "How We Tripled Our Leads Using This Rarely Discussed Blogging Tactic".
So, how do you plan and execute a content strategy to get the desired results?
Are "Content refurbishing' and 'Content Repurposing' similar terms?
NO. Both terms may look the same, but there is a big difference between the two.
Refurbishing or Revamping content means updating existing content keeping the intent the same as that of the original content. That is keeping the target audience the same.
The content refurbishing or revamping process includes adding updates on the subject to make it relevant for the audience and make it more current.
Whereas repurposing existing content means you are making two significant changes in your content, i.e.,
- changing the content format (a blog to an e-book or a guide to an infographic) and
- changing the target audience for the content (updating a blog written initially for startups is now repurposed for startups & small business).
How to prioritise content that is worth refurbishing?
Do not bother to refurbish just any random old blog. Updating old content that doesn't need to be updated is a waste of time.
Create a plan to refurbish old content, maybe "existing content revamp calendar' keeping in mind the following points:
Prioritise pages that have lots of keyword impressions but is low in rankings.
Pick up blogs that are not getting enough traffic like they initially got and lower what you expected.
Keep one thing in mind; traffic is not the only single criteria to pick a piece of content for refurbishing.
After you are done with your list of dead content pages, you need to take a call with each blog type.
Basically, the blogs on your website can be divided into three categories
- Evergreen content
- Seasonal content
- News/Events content
Evergreen Content
Any blog that creates an average demand all year round, i.e., attracting audiences at each point all year, can be considered an evergreen blog.
Your Google Analytics can get you that report, a list of pages that have generated average traffic all the time. That is your evergreen content.
How to refurbish evergreen content?
Evergreen content needs regular updates. And since it is relevant to your audience throughout the year, you must keep an eye on
- The latest developments on that subject/topic
- Ensure that your blog covers all the latest information
- Update the 'last modified' or 'last updated' date every time you make changes to your content. It's easy for Google to check your content's freshness (suggested in the Google Freshness Update in 2017).
Seasonal Content
The content that was created for a particular season and the season repeats periodically, maybe every month or every year.
For example, if a website creates a 'Black Friday Sale' blog or an 'Australia Day' blog post, these are seasonal content, as it surges demand during that period each year.
Your Google Analytics reports will show you an increased search volume during a specific season (month/year) for your seasonal content.
How to refurbish seasonal content?
You can update the seasonal content on your website as the new season approaches. To ensure that your seasonal content is relevant to the same audience for another season as well, keep in mind the following
- Make sure your content is SEO optimised with the new seasonal updates
- Write well in advance
- Publish refurbished content for your audiences on different social media platforms to create a buzz for the topic.
News / Event Content
News based and event-based content pieces is different altogether. If you cover news and events in your blogs, the approach to refurbishing it is different from that of evergreen & seasonal content.
In your Google Analytics, you'll observe just one spike (or maybe two) for an event/news-based blog post. Hence, reworking the same content is not required.
How to refurbish news/event content?
Ideally, you should not refurbish it. But what you can really do is
- Connect various news-based content pieces written on different time frames and create a hub and spoke model.
- The idea is to make your newsmaker page a pillar page and all the other articles as content clusters.
- The content cluster model or the Pillar page model gives your readers a clear understanding and a holistic view of the series of events and keeps your content updated and your readers engaged.
