How to get more website traffic by refreshing old content

One answer is to spend a little time updating your existing content. This requires less effort and delivers faster results.

Here are the three stages to get more website traffic by refreshing old content:

Analyze your old content

The first angle of attack in driving traffic to your website is usually posting expert tips on niche subjects that relate to your business. So, for example, if your business is Content Marketing, you likely already have enough content on your site to exploit.

Hopefully, this is all good quality content that in the past has generated a lot of traffic. But inevitably, the relevance of this content will change over time and become dated, which can result in your business looking out of touch.

The good news is that there is always room for improvement.

Identify what content to improve and why

The first step is to review all of your content and determine which parts require action. It’s recommended that content be broken down into three different groups:

1. Old / Out-of-date content – Requiring the most urgent action.
2. Relevant but underused – Arguably good quality content with low traffic levels.
3. Recent and still quite relevant – Might need a few small tweaks.

Old and out-of-date content is the category that requires the most urgent action, so focus on those articles first. Then work your way through the other categories in the order outlined above.

Remember to also update other types of pages other than blog articles. Services pages, product pages and even staff profiles should also be updated regularly to more accurately reflect your business expertise.

Finally, you may want to use tools such as SEMrush and Google Analytics to identify pages that are resulting in fewer conversions. These pages are clearly underperforming and are ripe for optimisation, both in terms of content and structure.

Refresh, Expand, and Retarget your content more often 

The most common way to update content is to make it longer in terms of word count and fuller in terms of detail.

An article that’s too short runs the risk of being flagged as unreliable & uninformative by search engines. If there’s not enough detail within an article, the user may leave your site for another page that gives them the level of information they are looking for.

If you want to expand an article, consider the user’s attention span and let that dictate the length of the post. For example, there may be twenty ways to set up Facebook ads instead of the ten previously listed in your article, but a user may not have the attention span to read through that amount of content. So focus on updating your current list with the most relevant and timely content.

Do your keyword research

Your aim should be to add up-to-date information that is truly useful to your visitor. This content should also be loaded with relevant keywords to help boost your search engine rankings.

Tools such as the Keyword Magic Tool in SEMrush can help you identify keywords that will be of use to your business and relevant to your content.

Adding the right keywords to your web page can help retarget content to attract new visitors. Consumer habits have a tendency to change and your content needs to adapt to keep up with those changes.

Revisit your content regularly. Consider a quarterly or bi-annual content review and repeat the above process to keep your content fresh.

Promote Your Content

After you’ve updated your content, use the various digital channels at your disposal to promote it as new content.

You can do this by:

1. Redistributing via your mailing list which has likely grown in size.
2. Reposting to social media to drive new likes and shares.
3. Start a new Adwords campaign to target new keywords.
4. Start a new link-building campaign to drive traffic from other websites.

You should also add links to updated content within your own web pages. Internal page linking should be a vital part of your website content strategy and is a great way of driving awareness of your content for visitors who are already on your site.

SEMrush includes a great tool for identifying orphaned pages. These are pages that do not have any other pages linking to them. Use tools such as this to identify pages that require updated content and then link to them from another page to boost its visibility. This will also send a signal to Google that the linked page is of importance and has relevance to your other content.

Yes, re-posting content is ok!

Feel free to re-post content to your social channels and re-distribute via your mailing list. Again, you may wish to consider a quarterly or biannual strategy for this to leverage interest from new followers.

Sharing cause-based content is a great way to get your business and brand noticed. So consider starting a charitable fund for your local community using a tool such as WooCommerce donations.

It’s been proved that consumers are more likely to show allegiances with brands that show mindfulness, caring and sustainability within their business practices. So consider making this a part of your content strategy.

In summary: Refreshing old website content to boost SEO

If you want to improve your website’s SEO and don’t have much time to dedicate to a full SEO strategy, regularly updating your old content is a move in the right direction.

This doesn’t mean that you should completely forget about creating new content for your website. However, refreshing old content is the perfect way to get more website traffic and dramatically improve your page views.

Remember the following when refreshing your website content:

1. Identify the pages that need updating and put them into three categories in order of urgency.
2. Focus on pages that are failing to convert visitors to customers (sales or enquiries).
3. Fix broken external links or add new links (both external and internal) to your posts.
4. Add new resources and media to your posts, such as PDF downloads, images and embedded videos.
5. Make sure your updates are in line with the latest Google algorithm changes.
6. Share your content via your mailing list and social channels.
7. Promote your new content using online advertising or link-building campaigns.

Google makes hundreds of changes to its algorithm every year, so a piece of content can rank well one day and then suddenly drop down the ranking the next. Updating your content helps combat these algorithm changes and keep your content visible in the SERPs.

We hope you found this article on how to get more website traffic by refreshing old content useful and empowering.

If you are struggling to find the time to improve the SEO of your website and would like help producing an SEO strategy, feel free to drop us a line to discuss your needs. I’m sure we’ll be able to create a digital marketing strategy to suit your requirements.