How To Update Content For SEO: Your Complete Guide

Have you ever considered updating your digital content strategy based on two main ones: inbound and outbound?

Inbound refers to enticing the leads by creating content that resonates with the audience. On the other hand, outbound is the more traditional method of engaging with a larger audience through emails, TV ads, billboards, etc. It turns out that between those two, “60% of marketers say that inbound (SEO, blog content, etc.) is their highest quality source of leads.” This means the better the content, the more leads you will have.

If you run off to write the new greatest content masterpiece, stop and take a minute. You should take a look at the old posts. They are slightly underperforming, yet your target audience still interacts with them. 

Hence, trying to update content for SEO will bring more traffic than you would have thought.

What is Website Content Refresh?

A content refresh, or as some call it, a “copy refresh,” is the process of modifying and updating the content of your website to improve search engine visibility and attract more organic traffic. 

The process only refers to existing content; you don’t have to write new content. 

For instance, you may have an article that was a traffic magnet in 2018. Fast forward to 2024, and its performance has changed. The aim of content refresh is to identify what’s affecting its performance and make the necessary updates.

Why Is It Important to Update Content for SEO?

If you have scrolled through this part of our article, you realize that keeping blog posts fresh has many benefits. Keep in mind that visitors want to see new information, and experts working at Google also consider it. Just check Google’s guidelines regarding the “freshness” of the articles.

Yet, aside from having up to date content, it comes with a bunch of advantages.

Building Reader Loyalty

It may be surprising, but content refresh will raise the reader’s loyalty. When readers land on blog posts or any up-to-date content, they get the feeling and image that the authors do not just post for the sake of posting. 

The freshness of the content increases the trust and loyalty among the readers toward the published content. Keeping the content new also positions you as an authority source among the readers.

Staying Up-to-Date With SEO Trends

The shortest road to update content for SEO is to understand that users’ search intent and behavior over the internet have changed over the years. What might have been perfect for search results in 2022 will not work in 2024, so if you want to stay up-to-date with SEO best practices, you should reconsider and refresh some of the crucial aspects of your posts. 

An out-of-shape article with old meta tags and keywords can harm your page from the technical and visual elements. If you are still using the long and clickable titles that were trending in the early days of the internet, currently, readers will scroll down and won’t even open them. 

In the further sections of the article, we will cover how to choose which articles to update, so stay tuned. Plus, Google constantly changes its algorithms, affecting your website rankings. Keeping old pages in check and improving them will maintain their visibility. Also, continuous content refresh makes content more attractive, and your articles become linkable assets that can drive more links to your website.

SEO trends also focus on improving user experience, which can involve optimizing for mobile or increasing site speed. Missing out on them can lead to a higher bounce rate if the website visitors are unsatisfied with the page.

Keeping up With Competitors

You have to be a step ahead of your competitors, not only by the quality of your product but also by the quality of your content. What can you do? Analyze what they are writing about, whether they have content gaps, things they have yet to speak about, and what you can add to your articles. 

Also, look at what drives attention to their pages. Is it the images, keywords with high metrics, and get inspired by your findings?

Remember that you are working for the same audience, and what helps them be outstanding can also benefit you. Analyzing your competitors may also assist you in performing a content refresh . 

Competition doesn’t always mean competing for the most sales and can also mean competition for attention. Believe it or not, the more attention you drive, the more you can turn interested visitors into leads.

Freshening up Content

In our times, new events occur in the blink of an eye, and if you miss out on them, you both miss the readers who search for new information and opportunities to rank. 

Let’s explore this in an example. Suppose you own a travel agency and have an article about the best destinations for a specific year. You can refresh the article by adding new trending destinations, traveling tips, and regulations. This can significantly improve your article in terms of SEO and for users as well.

When you update content for SEO, Google understands that your website is active and relevant. This can improve your SEO performance, making it easier for potential customers to find your site. Besides, regular updates present your brand in the eyes of the audience as an authoritative source of information, so if they need to find something, they will turn to your page.

As promised, we will start on all the ins and outs of refreshing old content and understanding how to choose the content that should be refreshed.

How to Choose Which Content to Refresh?

To update content for SEO, you do not have to rewrite every old blog post. We will help you understand how to update website content and how to choose which ones need it. 

We suggest starting with backlinks since search engines prioritize pages with quality links, which can help your content optimization in more ways than you think.

Look at Pages With Good Links

Good SEO optimized blog posts also mean articles with good links. Links are one of the primary factors based on which Google gives blog articles their ranking position. Thus, when pages have several quality links, their domain rating and page authority can be positively high. This positively affects the website’s search rankings. 

When you update content for SEO after auditing these pages, look at pages with relevant links, find out what kind of content attracts visitors, and try to update the information that changed after the article was initially published.

Find Pages With the Most Traffic

Pages with the most traffic are already performing well and attracting visitors. All that is left is to enhance their performance with a content refresh. By shifting a little focus on them, you can have maximum impact and see a significant increase and improvement in rankings. If you don’t know which pages on your website have the most traffic, we will help you find them. 

We will walk you through the process.

Step 1: Log in to your Ahrefs account and type your domain name in the top search bar. 

Step 2: After that, you will be taken to an overview page where you will find on the left-hand menu section called “Top Pages,” or Pages you have to click on.

Step 3: In this section, you will see various filters to help you sort the pages. To find the pages with the top-performing ones, filter by “Traffic.” 

After that, you will see the pages below from highest traffic to lowest.

In the results, you will see the pages with the most traffic, and all that will be left to do is to make changes that will further improve the content of the pages.

Prioritize Pages With Lots of Keyword Impressions

From the previous parts, you can already understand that it is easier to build on something good and make it even better if you want to perform a content refresh. That is why we suggest you prioritize pages with lots of keyword impressions. 

Focusing on these pages will allow you to take advantage of their high visibility and make them work even better. You can also check how the focus keywords are performing; you may need to change them to enhance the performance of the pages. This will attract more relevant visitors who are ready to take action and be directed to other pages on the website from the blog. 

 In the example, you can see that we found keyword impressions in Google Search Console. You can check the Queries and Impressions from the “Performance on Search result” section.

We have key arguments to help you understand why:

• Search engines often show pages with specific words. This means they are relevant to users’ search queries, and when you update them, they will attract even more attention.
• Improving pages with many keyword impressions allows you to improve the click-through rate. Targeting and optimizing titles and meta descriptions leads to better matching search intent and makes the pages more appealing to users. You should also avoid duplicate meta descriptions to ensure each page is unique and can stand out in search results. Hence, your CTR increases, meaning more impressions will become actual visits.
• Surprisingly, keyword impressions can open the gaps in your content, which can be improved, too, and give you space to cover additional subtopics. Updating your pages to cover these gaps allows you to integrate more long-tail keywords and have a broader search.

How Often Should You Conduct Website Content Refresh?

In short, there are no strict timelines for content refresh. The frequency with which you need to make updates depends on the nature of the articles. For example, you may have an article about “The Best Marketing Practices.” This topic can undergo changes due to new trends and emerging technologies in the field, so you will need to update your article to cover the new trends.

On the other hand, you can have evergreen topics such as “The Importance of Marketing,” which will always be on point.

12 Ways To Update Content for SEO

Well, we have reached the critical part of the article: all the fun ways to make your content pop even more and how to properly update content for SEO. 

So, without further ado, let’s dig in.

Add the Current Year to the Heading Tag

Headlines should reflect what is included in the article, and if you have been updating website content, headlines should also show that. Plus, why not make it enticing both for the search engine and humans? 

As soon as you add the year in the headline tag, the search engine gets the message that your content is up-to-date. You will be among those who will show the queries that need fresh content. 

People prefer to read what is fresh, specifically for evolving topics. So, if our eye catches the year in the headline, we consider the article new and will click on it. Hence, this is a great way to make the CTR results high technically and by appealing to the audience. It is also an easy way to update content for SEO.

Update Meta Tags

Google gives you two ways to advertise: free and paid. If there is a place where there is a chance to advertise for free, be smart and take it. 

Meta tags are the first thing that pops up in Google and should be enhanced when you update content for SEO. Check to see what needs to be changed to make it even more tempting for the reader. You may check your competitors to get inspiration for your page and add keywords and topics that currently rank.

But how do you know that your meta tag needs changes? If the CTR is lower than 3%, something is wrong, which you can check using Google Search Console. You can try different ways of writing your meta tags to see what works for your audience and what makes them click and read the articles, and identify the areas of change accordingly. 

First, you have to check how your CTR is performing. As you can see in the example, you can check it using Google Search Console by setting the timeline for the last 28 days (or as for the period you wish); you can see the performance of CTR and Total clicks, Total Impressions, and Average Position.If your performance is close to the number provided in the example, 0.4%, your meta tags need refreshing.

Answer Recent “people often ask” Questions

If you needed a place from where you could add more value to your content, “people often ask” is where to look. It appears as a small window with questions, and if you click on them, you will see short snippets with answers from different websites. This is where you can find what bothers readers the most and what they look for more often and it can help to update content for SEO.

Adding answers to the questions they are curious about gives the readers exactly what they want. Plus, you can make your page appear as a trustworthy source of information that provides valuable answers to specific search queries. 

So, if you look at the screenshot, you will see a window with questions that appear after the first result.

If the number of questions you ask in the article “people also ask” portion is high, then the opportunity to show under any of the questions as an answer is also high.

Update Internal Links

Sometimes, you may not notice it, but your internal may direct visitors to pages that no longer exist, wrong ones unrelated to the anchor text, and make the page hosting them look spammy. So, when you decide to update content for SEO, you have to say no to these links. 

There are easy ways to improve internal links.

• Try linking to newly written content.
• Identify broken internal links and replace them.
• Make sure that the anchor texts give a clue about the internal link.

Link to New Research

We often put statistical information in the posts and articles to raise the credibility of our points. For old posts, outdated data causes distrust. So, if the goal is to improve old posts, there is a need to renew the data and statistics provided in the article. 

The new information in data assists readers in decision-making. It increases their desire to return to the page as a helpful and relevant source, so keeping the data in check is essential to update content for SEO.

Refresh With Keyword Research

We know that keywords play a crucial role when we need to update content for SEO, and we can boost the performance of pages with high keyword impressions. How about enhancing our SEO efforts more with new keyword research?

Step 1: Log in to your Ahrefs and find the keyword explorer section. 

Step 2: copy-paste or type the topic for which you need keywords. For example, it is “AI in marketing”; hit the button, and Ahrefs Keyword Explorer will generate them for your explorer dashboard.

Step 3: You will see keywords related to the article. Now, you can sort them by the country you intend to rank in, search volume, and more. 

By analyzing the new keywords, you can identify the gaps and what you need to work on when you update content for SEO to stay competitive. Also, you can diversify your keyword usage and discover long tail and alternative ones. When incorporating new keywords into your content, make sure to avoid keyword stuffing, as it can undermine the effectiveness of your content and harm your search engine rankings.

Insert New Visuals

Did you know that by 43%, visuals are more persuasive than texts? So, it’s time to look at them. Thus, adding infographics, images, and other visuals to your blog posts is also crucial when we update content for SEO.

Visuals help the reader to understand the written content better, so find places where you think it will be suitable and images. Also, different kinds of visuals make the posts more engaging, so add GIFS and memes where you see fit.

For instance, sometimes you search for something, and images come up with the search results. If your photos are optimized correctly, they will show up, and users will click on them, increasing the click-through rate. 

Change Image Alt Tags

Alt texts, or tags, are snippets meant to help those readers who cannot see and describe the images for them. 

Remember that alt tags also help search engines better capture the visuals in the text, so by being a minor thing, they have a good impact when you update content for SEO.

So, you can optimize alt text by the focus keyword and be careful not to stuff it. Keep in mind it has to be short and concise.

Add Expert Quotes

In the above sections, we mentioned that data and statistics increase credibility. Want to know what else does? Turning to experts is also a go-to strategy. 

Experts share their real-life experiences, which makes your content more relatable to readers. Their expert advice can also help customers in their decision-making and assist you when you update content for SEO.

When you add expert quotes from interviews or other insights the professionals share, you add another level of depth to the article. Turning to experts expands your horizons and gives you unique and fresh content.

Now, you may wonder where to find those articles to update content for SEO.Try searching on LinkedIn, where professionals tend to post their feature articles or find news agencies related to the article with expert quotes. 

Repromote

You blow dust, polish your old posts, and finish your efforts to update content for SEO. It’s time to show it to the world. Use social media to reflect the updated articles with relevant posts, or use an email newsletter to send emails with refreshed articles to the targeted audience. This strategy will assist you in attracting more audiences. You can then redirect them to the blog post page and increase website traffic.

You can also promote the refreshed content by giving internal links to the old articles from each newly published content. Check the match between the anchors and URLs, and you will be fine.

Improve readability

Yes, if you want to update content for SEO, you have to improve readability, and here is why. Readers prefer texts with simple language and those that are shorter. Everything is quick and easy to read, which is excellent. Yet, they disregard your website’s old content, which may be complex and challenging to comprehend. 

Try optimizing blogs with tools. For one, Grammarly helps to check spelling mistakes and correct them, as well as improve the syntax of the text. The great thing is that you can check the texts inside the tool and through the Chrome extension. In the app, you can import the document or check the article as you write, as you can see on the screen. 

You may also use the Hemingway Editor to identify complex sentences, replace them with simple ones, avoid passive voice, and optimize adverbs. Similar to Grammarly, you can check the spelling of the text with ProWritingAid. 

You can also check the readability of the texts by Yoast SEO, a WordPress plugin that shows the text’s readability score, highlighting the text’s chunk to break it down and making good use of headings. 

You can use these tools to make editing easier and create clear, concise, and engaging content that resonates with your audience and improves readability. With the help of these tools, you can be sure that you will have high-quality, engaging content.

Plus, remember that the article readability score correlates with the ranking. The better it is, the better you rank.

Add FAQ Sections

The closer we get to the finish line and to understanding how to update content for SEO, the more critical it becomes to mention the importance of FAQs. It is the section with the most common questions regarding the topic asked by the audience. 

The essential part is that FAQ assists in search engine optimization. They get brief, sufficient answers since they rely on Google Answers and Featured snippets. Besides, it provides precisely what search engines want to see answers to users’ questions.

If you are still wondering what this mythical FAQ’s face is, what should it look like? Just look down on the example. As you can see, it has subheadings with the questions. You can take the questions from FAQ, from Google’s “People also ask” section.

SEO Content Audit: The Ahrefs Way

Previously, we looked into separate aspects of how to update content for SEO,but a comprehensive approach suggests running a complete SEO content audit.

But before we provide you with a step-by-step guide, you have to understand that the critical portion of a content audit is identifying the goals you are trying to reach. How is it going to help your content update efforts? What aspects are more critical for you? Then, focus on improving them based on the reports.

So, if you are ready, let’s see how to conduct a content audit in Ahrefs. 

Step 1.This step is already familiar. Log in to your Ahrefs account and find the site audit section.

Step 2: Here, you will find the tag New Project.

Click on it, or you may have already done a crawl, and Ahrefs has saved the project, so you can also choose that option. 

Step 3: For the first case scenario mentioned above, you will see two options for manually inputting the URL from Google.

Step 4: Just hit the “New Crawl” button for the second option and wait.

You can choose settings for your audit, the crawl scope, schedule the time of the crawl, and also authentication. 

Step 5: Set up crawling settings. Make sure that there are no duplicate versions of your site. There can be two versions of your website address: https://site.com or https://www.site.com, but only one should lead visitors to your website. This plays a role as Google sees them as addresses to two different websites, and they can further mass with indexing and crawling.

After choosing the correct crawl source, pick the crawling speed based on your server performance. You can also exclude additional parts of the URL that are not important for the crawl.

Step 6. Click on the “Start Crawl” or “New Crawl” button and wait for the crawl to finish. Wait for it to finish, it may take some time.

Now it’s time to review the crawl results to know what to work on to update content for SEO. After the crawl is complete, you will get a “Site Audit overview. Look through the issues identified by the crawl and see which ones are more important, and start by working on them. Try fixing the errors first and then look at warnings and notices.

Analyze the crucial elements found by the crawl. Look for and eliminate technical issues like broken links, crawl errors, etc.

Check the meta titles, descriptions, and headers and renew them accordingly. You must also review the website content and identify the parts you need to work on.

But the audit doesn’t end with this. If you want to be satisfied with your efforts to update content for SEO, you have to monitor the site’s performance constantly. You can even export the information to see more clearly what needs more effort. 

Let’s Wrap Up

Now, let’s quickly go over the key points on how to update content for SEO

• Updating old posts can increase traffic and visibility more than new posts.
• Keeping your content fresh is essential to maintaining readers’ loyalty and fitts with Google’s guidelines.
• Add images, infographics, and videos to make the content more interactive.
• To improve and update content for SEO, enhance readability, and target a wider audience.
• To successfully update your content, target your website pages with quality links.
• Regularly check the pages with high traffic and keyword impressions, conduct SEO audits, and fix broken internal links.

Accepting the challenge of updating content for SEO is hard, but the rewards are more than worth it. The few work hours guarantee success and a winning hand against competitors, so be brave and embrace the challenge. 

FAQ about updating content for SEO