Why You Should Refresh Your Old Website Content

Over time, content loses relevancy and can diminish in value. While many marketers love to generate new content, sometimes you don’t have the reinvent the wheel. Refreshing or repurposing old website content is a great way to quickly produce material that can boost SEO or support other campaign efforts.

Why you should refresh old outdated content

Improve SEO rankings

We often hear “Google likes fresh content.” At the same time, we hear many industry experts claim “Google prefers older pages.” So which is it?! Short answer: both.

We know Google wants to rank pages that have authority and topical relevance. Older URLs already have authority, and adding fresh content to old pages with the intent of increasing topical relevance should help our content rank higher.

Keep your visitors informed and engaged

Regardless of how visitors end up on your site, if they look for more information you’ll want to ensure you have relevant, accurate content ready for them. Refreshed content gives your audience a chance to learn valuable information about your business.

Restock your content library

Old blogs and landing pages are often archived or deactivated, never to be seen again. Some of this forgotten content can be repurposed and turned into fresh and relevant material. Refreshed content can be helpful on and off your website.

Native ads: Promote refreshed content through native ads that look and feel like featured articles, videos, or infographics on websites and social media.

Support campaigns: Most marketing campaigns will direct visitors to a landing page, freshly restock content provides new and interested visitors more to engage with.

How to Refresh Content

If you’ve got a robust content library that spans years, it can seem daunting to determine which pieces to repurpose and how to execute them. Keep in mind that you should mainly consider evergreen content. A page named Top Instagram Advertising Trends in 2021 will quickly become outdated and won’t ever have a chance of ranking anytime beyond 2021. The same thing goes for topics or announcements that are no longer relevant.

Do your research

Take some time to look through your website analytics and find the top-performing content. Here are some ideas to get you started.

• Which pages had the most views?

• Are there high-quality backlinks (an external site linking to your page) for this page?

• How long are visitors staying?

• Did users come from organic channels or paid campaigns?

Build on previous content and update outdated information

Instead of completely rebuilding content, add new sections that create value for your viewers. You can add context or utilize new keywords to boost SEO. Ensure you’ve removed or replaced any information that is no longer accurate or relevant.

Link to internal pages

Encourage visitors to continue browsing by providing helpful links to other pages on your site. This helps to move visitors towards a conversion and increases page authority, which boosts SEO.

Update date/time and add editor’s note (if applicable)

Finally, when you save your edits to your page, update the published date and time. Depending on your content, it can also be beneficial to add an editor’s note explaining when and why the article was updated. This is especially helpful if your article has comments on it from a date before the published date and time.