How to update content to improve SEO?

A good content marketing strategy is not just about creating new content, but also about updating what has already been published. Updating your content and integrating the latest information provides added value for the reader and is proven to help improve the position of your pages in search results.

Update of content and position in Google

Having a corporate blog is part of any marketing strategy aimed at increasing visibility in Google search results. A blog allows you to position yourself as an expert in your field and stand out from the competition.

However, for you to actually achieve this your content will need to be constantly updated. This is useful primarily for your readers, but also for search engines: the purpose of Google & Co. is in fact to provide users with the best of search results, which goes hand in hand with the most updated content.

Let's see an example of why:

A page with outdated data or information will probably not answer the question a user is looking for the answer to, which will eventually leave the page quickly.

This results in a high bounce rate, a clear signal to the search engine that the content quality of the page in question is low. As a result, Google will lower its ranking in the SERPs.

The good news is that quality outweighs quantity, and you won't have to continually create new content - regularly updating existing content helps the page rank high in search results.

A comprehensive, high-quality blog post with up-to-date information can often do more for SEO than you can imagine.

What content should you update?

First of all, to successfully update your content you will need to make a selection. It can be safely assumed that some pages, such as guides or definitions, can safely remain unchanged for several years.

Here are some useful tips to select the right pages to update.

Expired statutory or statutory regulations

If there is an article on your blog that talks about a specific legal norm that is no longer valid, update the post by referring to the regulations in force or inform that these have changed.

The same goes for statistical data. If you have been using research for several years and in the meantime new publications have appeared, update your content with the new data, which will certainly be more valuable to the user.

Changed prices and assortments

Have you published an article on the blog where you mention a product, a group of products or a brand that is not in the assortment of the store or whose price has changed?

Inform your readers about this by providing information on the restocking date, updating the price or replacing the products in question with others of similar characteristics. Offering the reader up-to-date information helps increase the credibility of your business.

Articles too vague

Sometimes, even if the content of an article is still up to date, some information relevant to the reader is missing. These pages also require an update. If the user does not find the answer to their question, or if the problem is only superficially explained, this will quickly leave the page, which, as we have seen, will result in an increase in the bounce rate.

Therefore, if your blog or website has content that doesn't describe a problem fully enough, it's worth enriching it. For example, you can add a paragraph focusing on a new keyword linked to the high search volume theme.

However, if the topic of the article is very broad, the best solution may be to create a new article in which to talk about the matter in more detail and link it to the original article via a link.

Articles with a backward publication date

Most users pay attention to the publication date of the articles. If your article's publication date shown on the SERP is a few years ago, users will most likely choose to open a more recent page, even if its ranking in the SERP is lower.

So, if you decide to update your content, be sure to communicate it to your users by making the update date clearly visible.

Meta title and Meta description

After you've edited the article content and added information relevant to the reader, it's also worth refreshing the Meta data. Remember to include the most important keywords for the update you just made.

Links and backlinks

Correct linking is one of the key elements of a good Off-Page SEO strategy to increase the authority of your domain. Make sure your links are always current and don't link to nonexistent pages (404 error) or that the URL has changed without redirecting.

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Text formatting

Making the texts on your pages less compact makes it easier for readers to read. Some useful tips to follow in this regard are:

Divide the text into short chapters

Highlight the most important parts in bold or another color

Insert bulleted or numbered lists

Divide the texts into titles, subtitles and paragraphs (H1, H2, H3, etc.).

Text structured in this way is easier for search engines to read as well.

Images, videos and graphics

Graphics and multimedia are valuable to both Google and users. If you often use different charts, statistics or videos in your articles, make sure they are always up to date.

The images and videos are intended to capture the reader's attention and make the article more visually appealing and easy to read, so it is advisable to use them, but in order for the reading to be considered of quality, the contents must be up-to-date.

Also remember to insert the alt tag to your images and to compress them to speed up the loading times of your pages.

Answers to readers' comments

Do you have a comment section below your articles? Is fantastic! Just like reviews, comments are viewed by search engines as user-generated content, a useful means of improving a page's ranking in Google's search results.

To provide even more valuable information to those who have left you a comment and to give the search engine a signal about the high quality of your website, take a few minutes of your time to respond.

Useful tools to update your content

In order for the content update to make sense and bring specific benefits, it is worth knowing which articles to update first. You can find out by using for example the following tools.

Google Analytics

A valuable source of information on your traffic is Google Analytics. Here you can observe several aspects, including:

User behavior 

User demographics

The average time spent on a page

The rebound rate

Through Google Analytics you can find out which articles you need to update by orienting yourself, for example, with the average reading duration: the less time users spend on a page, the greater the need to update it.

Google Search Console

The Google Search Console is a free tool useful for some data on the performance of your site, including:

The total and / or clicks and impressions of a particular article

The average position in search results over a given period of time

The keywords with which you are found on the web

You can also find and resolve any coverage errors on the Search Console.

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a crawler that helps improve On-Page SEO by extracting data and checking for errors. With the free version you can scan up to 500 URLs, with the paid version all your URLs.

With this tool, you can view various information, including the quality of the headers, the Meta data, the loading times of individual URLs and the number of links on a given page.

Ahref

Ahrefs, or more specifically Content Gap, allows you to see which keywords your competitors are showing and you are not. This way you can find out which phrases to enter during your updates to strengthen your position in the search engine.

The disadvantage: the service is paid. You can give it a try for $ 7 to see if it's worth an investment or if you prefer to use other tools. 

SERP

Google search results can also be used to evaluate which articles should be updated. Look at the results on the first page of the SERPs, check which keywords are used by your competitors (for example in the Meta description) and include them when updating your publications.