Summary:  Do you have outdated content on your website that needs to be updated? There are some important reasons why you should update your content. Check out our blog for some tips!

As time goes by, your website will inevitably have outdated content that needs to be updated. Creating fresh content written for your target audience (and customers) is core to an effective digital marketing strategy. Start by reviewing the old content first and consider refreshing it, so it is relevant to your current content marketing strategy.  When you review the old content, ask yourself, “how relevant and helpful is this content to current issues and challenges that my customers have, and how do my services and/or products resolve these?” Doing this can save a lot of time and improve the relevance of your content to your target audience. We also recommend updating site content by following an editorial calendar or scheduling periodic review dates.

Besides reviewing and refreshing past blog articles and site pages, what other reasons exist for refreshing outdated content?

SEO Can Be Improved

Google owns more than 80% of the global search market and constantly updates its algorithm to provide users with the most relevant search results. Their algorithm updates focus on ensuring users have a good experience and find the most relevant and current information they are looking for. Ultimately these updates can make your site page rankings drop since content loses its value over time because consumer needs change. The keywords used to improve search results when the original content was written may not be as relevant anymore.

Refreshing outdated content allows you to improve SEO performance by using better or more relevant keyword terms to increase rankings. This will enable you to optimize more than the on-page SEO of your site content. The refresh can also include changes to off-page SEO and technical SEO updates. The technical SEO article referenced here is an excellent example of refreshed content since it states, “published on Jan 29, 2016, updated Jan 13, 2022.” Updating all the relevant SEO for a piece of content will help the page rank easier.

It can Save Time, But Still Give Results

Creating fresh content is an integral part of an effective content strategy. Refreshing old content with new and relevant information should also be part of the strategy since this can save time and deliver good results.

But how do you identify which content to update? Start by doing a content audit to analyze the performance of your site content to determine where to make improvements. While most content audits focus on SEO performance, you will also need to audit the content’s business performance and utility annually.

What factors determine if a page should be audited?

• • If the site page is less than six months old, it should not be audited since it takes time to rank in search engines
  • Does the page rank in the top three for its primary keyword? If it does, focus your attention on lower-ranking content.
  • Does the page rank in the top twenty? In this case, keywords may not be the problem. However, there may not be enough backlinks to compete with other content on the search engine results pages.

Grammar and Spelling Mistakes Can Be Fixed

When you write a new piece of content and look at it the next day, you often find cringe-worthy grammar and spelling mistakes. While we all strive for excellence, sometimes errors happen. Refreshing outdated content provides the opportunity to fix spelling and grammar mistakes. In addition to linguistic errors, what other things can you update? Consider other things like:

• • Is the title or headline catchy enough to draw readers’ attention when they search for a specific topic?
  • Is the main message still relevant to the readers you are targeting?
  • Are all the internal and external links valid and up to date? Do the links reference outdated information?
  • Are the visual elements and graphics still current with your current brand design guidelines?
  • Are the meta descriptions, image names, alt tags, and other on-page search SEO elements correctly set up?
  • Does the URL of the page properly incorporate the topic of the refreshed content?

The Accuracy of Your Site Content can be Increased

Content maintenance also includes increasing the accuracy of your site content by updating stats and backlinks and revising content to have the latest information. Updating older content also provides the opportunity to create a better user experience by adding more interesting visual content that includes:

• Photos
• Graphics
• Illustrations
• Videos
• Data Visualization
• Visual call-to-actions
• User-generated content

Creating accurate and refreshed content is more than visuals and including the latest information. The content must also speak to your target audience and explain how you address their needs and solve their problems. Your audience may have changed or become more diverse from when the original content was written.

The changes made to outdated content do not have to be extensive. It can be revised by using a different or updated perspective of your customer.

Google Can Determine if Your Content is Fresh

Do you want Google to see that your content was updated and increase the monthly traffic on your site? Since over 4 billion people use mobile phones to access the internet, Google has transitioned to mobile-first indexing. This means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. While having a mobile version of content is not required to show pages on their SERPs, it is strongly recommended that you do.

Adapting your content for mobile use is another way to increase ranking in search engines and draw more organic traffic to your content. Google follows mobile-indexing best practices to ensure the desktop and mobile content are the same; otherwise, there will be some traffic loss. When you refresh outdated content by adapting it for mobile, subtle changes such as using shorter paragraphs and bullet points can make all the difference.

Changes to Searcher Behavior

Local, national, global, and personal events can change searcher behavior quickly. According to a recently published report on content marketing trends, among the things highlighted is the need to create personalized, humanized content and track your audience’s shifting needs. During the last three years, the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic affected everyone and changed how we worked and interacted with others.

Some other trends affecting the behavior of searchers included embracing empathy, research, and storytelling and approaching content as a revenue driver. Other important trends worth mentioning include creating more short-term video content and businesses making content audits a higher priority.  The trends in how searchers behave and what they expect have changed significantly during the last few years. Now people often have meetings online, want to travel less for work, and want to make purchases where it is most convenient. That can include using an app, going to a nearby store, or buying online. The old content you are adapting might have to reach customers on a different platform and be published sooner than expected.

Conclusion

Now you have read six compelling reasons to refresh your old site content and some tips on how you can do it. Refreshing all the content on your site can be a very daunting task, especially if you have a limited amount of time and resources. That is where we can help.

Contact us for a free consultation if you need help refreshing your website content. We will work with you to develop a plan and schedule that fits your needs and budget to deliver the results you need to stay ahead of the competition.

About the Author

Howard Walker is a Digital Marketing Consultant and owner of WSI Smart Web Marketing. He serves as a manager and strategic advisor and uses his experience, expertise, and knowledge from many years of experience in the tech industry as a product marketing engineer and project manager. His experience with digital marketing services and the use of online analysis tools allow him to implement strategies and recommendations that provide the best-in-class services and results for clients.