Why You Should Refresh Existing Content

Staying ahead in the world of SEO is not just about creating content, it requires a commitment to constantly stay updated and refreshed. Google tends to favour recent content, so keeping your content fresh can greatly benefit your performance. This article explores the importance of refreshing your content in order to maximise your SEO performance.

What is an SEO content refresh?

A content refresh involves strategically updating and amending current content to make sure everything is fully accurate and up to date. Content refreshment involves revisiting old content (such as articles and FAQ pages) to not only ensure they remain up to date, but also relevant, informative and competitive. This makes them well-positioned for search engine visibility.

Take an in-depth look at articles, taking your time to read through them, and ensure everything is up to date, correct and flows well. The primary benefit of a content refresh is to encourage improved search engine results. It may even help you appear in featured snippets, which can be incredibly beneficial.

How often should content be updated?

Whilst this decision is entirely yours, as a general guideline, auditing your content at least once a year is recommended. Timing of your content update is crucial; consider aligning content updates with peak periods of business activity or significant industry shifts in order to capitalise on emerging opportunities.

Stay vigilant when updating your content- monitor developing trends and adjust your content accordingly to maintain relevance and authority. To target new visitors, check your keywords regularly to see where they can be added or amended. Additionally, ensure you stay up to date with any Google algorithm updates. They can change frequently and often without warning, meaning things could get overhauled entirely!

How do I refresh content?

• Conduct a thorough audit of your content: Is it still relevant to your business operations, goals and objectives? If not, it may be time to make some changes.
• Proofread everything: When you originally uploaded your content its possible you may have missed grammar and spelling mistakes, especially if you were going through a demanding process to create a new site or had to adhere to strict deadlines when your site launched. A fresh pair of eyes can make all the difference!
• Create a plan of what needs to be refreshed: It may be best to create an action plan and spread out what needs refreshing over time. This prevents you from becoming overwhelmed with the amount of content being refreshed. You can also measure the impact of the content that has been refreshed previously and use this as a foundation for further development.
• Check out your competitors: The whole point of SEO is to perform better than the competition, and if their content is consistently ranking higher than yours, you need to find out why! Look for trends amongst them, or pick up on any evident gaps or missed opportunities from them that you could fill.
• Include infographics or imagery: These can help make your content more visually appealing and more memorable, illustrating things, has a competitive advantage over content that doesn’t feature graphics. However, be mindful of avoiding overly large imagery, as it can slow down loading speeds.
• Once your content has been refreshed, analyse its performance! This can help you keep track of the impact your refreshed content is having, such as comparing performance before and after it was refreshed to see what has changed.

What content should be refreshed?

Utilising data analytics can help you to identify what content could benefit from being refreshed. Assess the performance of existing content, and update accordingly. Google analytics (a free tool) can help you identify pages or articles that have lost popularity over time, showing you important data such as page visits and engagement, which can help you identify areas for improvement.

Consider consolidating related posts to save old content from being overly repetitive with current content. You may also wish to update the copy on key pages on your site as well as social media in order to maintain a consistent brand identity across different platforms.

Importance of linking

Check for interlinking- if your page already includes links (whether that’s your own site or another site), make sure said links are still live. Moreover, by refreshing your content, you may identify new links to include if any relevant ones have recently been added. Linking help to increase site authority.

Broken links can negatively impact your site’s ranking and affect the user experience, so you must ensure any links in your content work correctly, and if they do not, implement redirects in order to send people to the correct destination.

Use Google Search Console or crawling software to regularly check your site for any broken links. If you have written multiple articles on the same topic, it may be worth linking them. Backlinks (links to your website from external sites) can aid in gaining site authority, and are really beneficial in order to direct people to your site.

Potential pitfalls

Avoid attempting to trick search engines by simply changing the dates without making any significant changes to your content. For example, merely changing the name of article from “Social media trends 2022”, to “Social media trends for 2024” without editing the content is not ideal.  Whilst you may experience a short-term boost, you are at risk of being penalised by Google if it picks up on this. Google will not reward pages that simply change dates without revision of the content.

When making changes to your content, the impact will not be instant. It can take time for Google to crawl your site, and recognise that changes have been made. Whilst you may not see immediate results, it can be beneficial in the long run.

How can Verto help

In the ever-changing SEO landscape, refreshing your content offers numerous advantages, allowing you to maintain relevance, visibility and a competitive edge. Regularly refreshing and updating your content enhances user experience, improves search engine rankings and enables you to stay on top of emerging trends and opportunities. Taking a proactive approach to updated copy will help to improve your SEO performance over time. Refreshed content can be seen as a quick win, because instead of writing an entirely new piece, making a few small tweaks to existing content may be all you need to achieve higher ranking search engine result.

If you are looking for help optimising your content from an SEO perspective, the experts at Verto are here to help. Contact us by completing our contact form, or call us on 01536411153.   [L1]