How To Update Old Content On Your Website For More Traffic

I know that written content takes up your valuable time and effort, which is why it is important that you get the most out of it.

Let’s jump right into it…

1. Identify content to update first

Go to Search Console -> Performance -> Pages 

Choose a page with high impressions but a low amount of clicks.

Under the Queries tab, you will see keywords that you are showing up for. Try and identify what terms you are showing up for but you have a low click-through.

Sprinkle these keywords throughout your copy and maybe even in your title tag, URL or meta description depending on what you have found.

This is what we did for a blog post that got less than 1 click per month for a year. Using the strategies outlined above,  the blog post increased search rankings dramatically.

2. Improve Click-through-rate

If you have old blog articles on the first page of Google yet they are not getting any traffic, then you may need to improve your CTR.

As you can see in this example, the most recent article is ranked # 1 in Google. 

Now, does this mean that it was written on November 8th 2019? 

No.

If you look closely in the URL, it says that is was written on 2015/02/09 (whichever country you are in, you can interpret that in whichever way you want, either way, the article was written in 2015.)

How and why has this happened?

The content that was written is an Evergreen piece of content.

An Evergreen piece of content is usually a timeless piece of content that stays relevant for a long time. Over time there will be others writing about the same topic and this is why it is important to keep content up to date. People are more likely to want to read content that is the most up to date, and from the image above you can see that the article at the top is the most recent (or in the eyes of the user). 

So, how do you change the publish date of an article to be more recent?

On WordPress, go to an existing blog post and on the right-hand side change the publish date to the date that you most recently updated the blog. 

Somewhere on the page also add “Last updated” and then list the date again just to be clear that this is the most up to date version.

Another way you can increase your CTR is by adding the date in the title. If you have a list of “The Top 10 Basketball Shoes” you may want to switch this to “Top 10 Basketball Shoes [2019 Edition]” for example.

3. Update internal/external links

As your site grows, your content production should grow too. You may have other blogs that have changed URLs or service pages that have too. It is important that all of these links are flowing well, so make sure that there are no broken links.

When you go back to update old articles, the chances are that you have written about other similar topics in the meantime so link to articles that you have written about recently too.

Check any external links that you have used to make sure that they are still valid and see if you can link to any more up to date articles as statistics can and do change over time.

4. Add videos