How To update Old Content For SEO And Double Your Traffic

After publishing a post, it is not the end of that post. Ideally, you should routinely check the SEO performance of all published posts. Therefore, it is important to learn how to update old content for SEO and reoptimize them in order to increase your organic traffic faster.

Apart from trying to increase your organic traffic, it is important to reoptimise old posts and keep them up to date for the sake of your readers. No one likes to read stale articles.

Anyway, here are 5 practical steps to update old content for SEO and double your organic traffic.

1. Check Google Search Console for The Performance of Posts

The best place to check the SEO performance of your articles is the Google Search Console.

Depending on the size of your blog, it may be impossible to do this routine check on all blog posts. So, it’s best to focus on some important posts that need the most attention. 

Important Old Content To Update for SEO

• Posts not getting enough organic traffic
• Posts with declining traffic

How do you identify these posts? That takes us to the next step…

What To Check In Google Search Console

Of course, you cannot reoptimise all your content if you have so much content (but you can if you have a little content). 

On the Google Search Console, we’ll identify those posts that need our attention the most.

Post to Identify In GSC are;

A. Posts with the Highest impressions (and low CTR)

The first target of posts to fish out in your GSC are posts with the highest impressions. These are the posts being shown on Google SERP the most.

Why these types of posts? That the posts are showing up often on SERP is good enough but the task here now is to convert more of those seeing your posts and not clicking it and further pushing these articles up in the ranking. Simple.

To fish out these posts, take the following steps:

• On your GSC dashboard, go to PERFORMANCE.

• Use the LAST 90 DAYS as the date filter

• On the PERFORMANCE page, ensure IMPRESSIONS is selected

• Scroll down below the graph and select PAGE.

• Then Sort by pages by Impressions by clicking the ARROW beside IMPRESSIONS. 

Ensure the arrow is pointing downwards. This means we are sorting pages by impressions; from highest to the lowest.

B. Keywords getting the highest impression (with low CTR)

At this point, you’ll be seeing all posts getting the most impressions on Google – from the highest to the lowest. 

What to do next?

• Click on each page for a detailed result.

• Switch to KEYWORDS instead of page. Do this by clicking KEYWORDS.

• Sort Keywords by impressions. Click the ARROW beside IMPRESSIONS and ensure it is pointing downwards.

At this point, you have the keywords that are getting the most impressions for a particular post.

Copy these keywords and paste them somewhere safe. You may copy the best 5 or 10 keywords.

Repeat this process for every post you intend to reoptimise.

Consider Reading: How To Do Keyword Research on Google

C. Individual posts not getting enough traffic

Identifying individual posts not getting enough traffic would likely require manual action. Meaning; you’ll manually try to remember individual posts you think should be getting traffic but are not.

To make life easier for you, the Google Site Kit plugin could help if you are using WordPress.

How Site Kit can help you Identify Individual Posts not getting enough traffic.

Assuming you have installed and activated the plugin, go to the dashboard. (Ensure you’ve connected your Search Console, Google Analytics, and maybe Adsense to your Site Kit).

Go to the SEARCH BOX above and type two or three words in the title of any posts you think are not getting enough traffic.

Next, select the post you had in mind and Site Kit would show you all the key performances of such post.

For the purpose of this tutorial, focus on the Search Console report of the post. In the report, you’ll see the trend of impressions of that post on Google.

Learn more about how organic impressions work.

What to look out for?

• If the impressions of the post are declining.

• For posts you are sure do not get enough organic traffic, take note of keywords getting the most impressions.

Now, you have all the necessary information, all you need now is to reoptimise your old posts so you can get more organic traffic from them.

Consider Reading: Free WordPress Hosting Solution

2. Update Old Content For SEO based on individual results

Assuming you have all information ready as discussed in the previous steps, it’s now time to get to work and do some magic.

A. Rewrite Article Titles

Edit each post from the list of articles you intend to repotimise.

Here, you need to rewrite the title of the post and make it more compelling or clickable.

If there is one key phrase getting about 60-80% more impressions than other keywords for that particular post, you may want to add that exact keyword in your title.

Here is a simple technique or formula to (write or) rewrite your title:

([Exact Target Keyphrase] + [Click Bait])

For example, maybe your current title is HOW TO FLY TO HEAVEN AND COME BACK. Let’s assume your keyphrase is “fly to heaven”. 

You could rewrite your title using our formula above:

FLY TO HEAVEN NOW [CHEAPEST AND SAFEST METHODS]

The idea here is to give people a reason to click on your post from the result page. Or Create some sort of curiosity.

Use this formula to rewrite (or write new) titles. Repeat this process for all articles you want to reoptimise.

Potential Result

For every post title written in this format, you’ll definitely get better CTRs. More people are likely going to click it.

Give it some weeks then watch your traffic increase on that post.

(To see results faster, you may want to request indexing for that particular page so the new title can begin to show fast on the Search Engine.)

Consider Reading: Retargeting vs Remarketing: The Major Difference

B. Naturally use keyphrases to get the most impressions from an article

After rewriting your title, next, you need to naturally use some of the key phrases that get the most impressions in the article.

Use about 2 to 3 key phrases with the highest number of impressions.

C. Add more images (plus key phrases in the alt description)

To have better results on the search engine, it’s always good to add more relevant images.

Make sure you use unique images – unique pictures snapped by yourself or unique designs. You could easily create a new design on Canva.

Stock images might not really help because there are thousands of them on search engines already.

After adding unique images, say 2 to 5 (depending on how long your content is), you need to use some of the key phrases used earlier in the alt description of each of the images.

Read Also: How To Write SEO-Friendly Article on Google Docs

D. Embed more relevant videos

It is proven that video improves SEO more than images. So, it is always advisable to embed relevant videos in your content.

The good part is that you do not have to create any videos by yourself. Simply go to YouTube and search for your keyword there.

Pick the most relevant video to your content and embed it at the most appropriate place.

Repeat this process for other keywords to add more videos.

Apart from improving your SEO, adding relevant videos add more value to your content for readers. This means that readers could spend more time on your blog, thereby increasing the average session time on your site.

It is important to note that embedding videos in the content are one of the uncommon ways to improve SEO.

Read Also: How To Convert YouTube Videos To Mp3

E. Add SEO-Friendly FAQ block

Another good way to update old content for SEO is by adding an SEO-friendly FAQ block.

In fact, it is one of the most uncommon ways to improve SEO.

Read my detailed guide on how to add SEO-friendly FAQ blocks to your content.

Conclusion

Reoptimising old posts are very important if you are serious about getting more organic traffic. Create time for it and do not take it for granted.

Ideally, I recommend that you do this every 3 months.

You’ll be surprised how much increase in traffic this simple technique can fetch.

As a reminder, these are the key steps to take in order to reoptimise your old content:

• Rewrite titles
• Use high impressions keyphrases in the article
• Add more images and use key phrases as alt description
• Embed more relevant videos
• Add SEO-friendly FAQ blocks

Update your old content for SEO and reoptimize them now to get more organic traffic.

If you found this article useful, I recommend that you also learn the difference between Cloud and web hosting, how to write high quality content, and the SEO meaning of Domain Authority.