In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, it’s more important than ever to keep your website up-to-date with fresh and relevant content. However, creating new content from scratch can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.
That’s where updating old content comes in. By refreshing and repurposing existing content, you can not only save time and resources, but also give your website an SEO boost.
In this article, we’ll explore why updating old content can help improve your SEO rankings in 2023 and provide you with actionable tips for making the most out of your existing content.
Updating content on your blog or website can help improve your search engine rankings for several reasons:
Google Loves Fresh Content
Search engines like to display the most relevant and up-to-date content to their users. By regularly updating your blog or website with fresh content, you signal to search engines that your site is active, and they will crawl it more frequently. This is why having a blog plays such an important role in SEO.
Google Scans For Strong Relevant Content to Support The Search Query (or keyword)
Search engines prioritize content that is relevant to the user’s query. If you update your blog posts with current information, you increase the relevance of your content and make it more likely to appear in search results.
Increase User Engagement and Keep Them on Your Website Longer
When you update your content, you give users a reason to return to your website, increasing user engagement. User engagement is a crucial factor in search engine rankings, as search engines use engagement metrics such as time on site and bounce rate to determine the quality of a website.
Backlinks Are Important
When you update your content, you can also use this opportunity to link to other relevant pages on your website, creating internal links. Internal linking can improve your website’s structure, making it easier for search engines to crawl your website and understand its content. Additionally, when you update your content, you can also reach out to other websites and ask them to link to your updated content, which can help you earn high-quality backlinks.
Overall, updating your content regularly can help you improve your search engine rankings, increase user engagement, and drive more traffic to your website.
So here are a few tips to help you get started optimizing the content on your website for better SEO.
Review the Analytics
Use your data to review the performance of your existing content. Look for the most popular pages and blog posts and what you can add or update to improve the performance of the page. It’s easy to update pages or posts that are no longer relevant. Make a list of pages or posts that could be updated. If you are not using any type of analytics, take a look at my article on a great lightweight alternative to Google Analytics here.
Read Through the Content
Once you’ve created the list of pages you want to start with, start reviewing each page. Look out for any copy or images that are out of date. For example, there could be an area that refers to an old event or news item. Alternatively, there could be some broken links that no longer work. Make sure to update any outdated content or images.
Add New Content
Fresh content is important for Google because it helps ensure that the search engine is delivering the most relevant and up-to-date information to its users. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, and providing fresh content is a crucial part of achieving this mission.
As you go through your existing content, see what you could add to further enhance the article. For many topics you already covered in the past, there will likely be new information or processes that you can add to the content/article.
Add Images/video
Adding visual content to your website can make it more engaging and attractive to users, encouraging them to spend more time on your site. This can help lower your bounce rate and increase the amount of time they spend on your site, two metrics that search engines use to assess the quality of your website.
Including current visual content on your website can enhance the user experience, making it easier for users to understand your content and interact with your website. This can lead to more positive user signals, such as social shares and backlinks, which can ultimately help improve your search engine rankings.
Internal Linking
Internal linking is the practice of linking one page of your website to another page on the same website. internal linking can improve your SEO by improving crawlability, creating a better website structure, spreading page authority, and improving the user experience.
By incorporating internal links into your website, you can help search engines understand and index your content more effectively, making it more likely to appear in search results and drive traffic to your website.
In conclusion, updating old content can be a highly effective strategy for improving your SEO rankings in 2023.
By keeping your content fresh, relevant, and up-to-date, you can not only boost your search engine visibility and drive more traffic to your website, but also provide your audience with the valuable information they need.
So, take the time to audit your existing content, identify opportunities for improvement, and start updating your old content today. With the right approach and a little bit of effort, you can leverage your existing content to achieve better SEO results and grow your online presence in 2023 and beyond.
Geno is the Owner/Creative Director at Monterey Premier, a web design agency that specializes in Divi and is based out of Monterey, Ca. He is a Divi expert and is known for his Divi tutorials & tips on Quiroz.co and is an excellent source of knowledge for anything related to Divi. Geno is also a Canva expert and helps other Canva users with his tutorials and tips here on the Monterey Premier blog. He has been designing websites since 1996 and enjoys all things design, traveling, hanging out with friends, encouraging other believers, and experimenting with new technologies.
