Revamp & Dominate: How To Upgrade Old SEO Content In 3 Simple Steps

In this newsletter, I'm going to show you how to optimize your older content for maximum SEO visibility.

Learning how to optimize your aged content for SEO can help your website's traffic significantly. It allows you to capitalize on previously done work and extract more value from it.

Unfortunately, many content managers and website owners overlook this vital strategy.

There are a few other why marketers avoid or struggle with updating older content:

Reason #1: Perception of the process as time-consuming and complicated

Reason #2: Lack of understanding of SEO principles

Reason #3: Fear of losing the limited organic traffic the original content is generating

Reason #4: Unsure about which pieces of content to prioritize for optimization

Today, I'm covering how you can overcome all these hesitations and start optimizing your older content with confidence.

Here's how, step by step:

Step 1: Identify older content that could benefit from SEO optimization

It's crucial to understand that not all content needs to be updated. Before diving in, analyze your content archives and identify:

1. posts that once performed well but have dropped off in traffic

   

   Use Google Search Console’s “Compare” feature to see which previously well-performing articles have started to drop in traffic.

2. or posts that are evergreen in nature but haven't been updated in a long time.

For example: software listicles like “8 Best X Software Solutions for 2022” are evergeen but should get a fresh update every year.

Update the following:

• new year in the title

• more tools added and title updated accordingly

• some tools removed if they’re not functional anymore

• pricing information updated

• new images if the tool’s interface has changed

• new FAQ content added

Make a list of these articles and start optimizing them one by one.

NB: don’t change the URL of the article in any way (this is what causes all the previous traffic of the article to drop to zero)!

Step 2: Perform a thorough SEO audit on the selected content

Many marketing people simply add a few keywords and think optimization is done. Please don’t be that person.

Your content audit should include an examination of what’s currently ranking in Google’s top 3 results for the same keyword and how it differs from your article:

• are you covering the same subtopics and with enough detail?

• have you missed the mark with the search intent and content type?

• is your content using up-to-date data?

• is there relevant FAQ content you should add?

You should also analyze the relevance of internal and external links, title tags, readability, and user engagement data.

Here are some tips from SEMrush on how to improve your writing for SEO, whether it’s creating new content from scratch or updating existing content.

Step 3: Update the content and republish

Here's the light at the end of the tunnel: once your auditing is done and necessary changes are made, publish your new-old content and watch as its performance improves.

Here are some additional tips for getting the updated content to start generating traffic:

• change the title of the article:

  • add the new year number to it: “8 Best X Software Solutions for 2024” or “Blog Post Title [Updated: 2024]”

  • make the title more engaging: “17+ Must-Have X Software Solutions If You Want to Make More Money”

• use a new featured image for the article that would grab more attention when shared on social media

• add a disclaimer about the update (“NB: This article was last updated on 5.07.2024”)

• again, don’t EVER change or update the URLs!!!

These steps, when carried out effectively, lead to revamped FRESH content that search engines love and users appreciate. So start dusting off those older SEO posts and give them a new life!