Is It Time To Clean Up Your Blog?

Do you find yourself stressed with all the pressure of coming up with new content? Some SEO experts claim that optimizing old content could be the answer to your content-related woes! If you have been keeping a blog for several years, it is possible that you have hoarded a lot of content on your blog. If you are a content hoarder, maybe it’s time to clean up your blog.

Determine If You Are a Content Hoarder

Do you look through your blog posts and evaluate your old blog posts? If you have been keeping your blog for awhile, it’s unavoidable that some of your older posts have become outdated. If you check out your blog posts and you see hundreds of different blog posts, it would be a good idea to do an audit to determine which ones you need to optimize and which ones you need to keep as they currently are. Digital marketing, along with several other industries tend to change frequently, so if your business is along these lines, your blog probably deserves an update.

You might ask, is it harmful if I just keep my old blog posts on my site? What does it matter if they are not performing so well? These days, search engines pay a lot of attention to the quality of the blog posts than the quantity. If you keep low-quality and outdated blog posts on your site, chances are, it will affect your organic rankings. These old posts might seem harmless but they can generate fewer clicks and higher bounce rates, which can damage your authority with Google.

These days, users also prefer fresh content, so that does not convince you to update your blog, we don’t know what will.

Blog Post Dates and SERPs

When people go to your blog, they usually check out the dates when your blog post was published or updated. When they see posts that are several years old, they’d automatically assume that the content of that is outdated. Even if Google brings up your page with the blog post up on the search results, chances are, it won’t stay there for long. Once Google detects that your link does not get that many clicks, it will assume that the content you have isn’t great which will lead to the dropping of your ranking.

How can you know if you need to get rid some of your content? Which ones should you revise? The first thing you should do is assess your posts. How many do you have on your site? Check out the analytics. Which posts have received organic visits in the past 3 months? If you see some posts that have not received even a single visit in the last 3 months, those are the ones you either rewrite or remove.

So, how can you tell if you have content you should get rid of, redirect or revise? First, look at the total number of posts you have on your website. Then check your analytics to see how many of those blog posts have received at least one organic visit in the last 90 days. If a blog post isn’t getting a single visit during that time frame, then that post is probably either an old, outdated post or one that is mediocre in quality and should probably be removed, redirected or rewritten.

Improving Your Old Content

When your old blog posts are not performing well, we can assume that they are outdated. You have several options when it comes to dealing with this type of blog posts. First is removing them altogether, second, update the content as you see fit, and your last option would be to redirect that old page to a new piece that is performing well.

Tips for Updating Your Posts

1. Check Out Your CompetitorsYou need to be aware of what you’re up against. Evaluate the pages that are ranking for the keywords that you have on your pages. Compare what they have with what your outdated page has. Is there a huge discrepancy in the information? What about the length of their post? What are they doing with their links and images? Looking at your competitors will open your eyes to what you have been missing all along.
2. Nail Your Blog StructureMake sure nothing’s amiss with your headers, descriptions, title tags, lists images and all the aspects of your blog. Check out how your content is structured and if the SEO strategies are implemented properly on the blog. Update your images and don’t forget to pay attention to the alt tags.
3. Listen to What the Comments are SayingThe comments on your old blog posts will likely tell you what your blog post is missing. If there are questions or discussions in the comments section that you have overlooked, cover that when you update your content.
4. Change the DateAfter you revise your content, make sure to change the date when you post it. This will prevent all those user assumptions about your blog posts being outdated.
5. Social Media PromotionUtilize your social media platforms to revive your content. After you have revised your old post, let your followers know by sharing your post on social media. Encourage them to interact and share your post too. If you featured anyone on your post, make sure to mention that person or the company that you have mentioned. This will encourage them to share your content for sure.
6. Interact With PeopleYou can email people on your mailing list to let them know about your improved content. Entice them with teasers and the benefits of reading your post. You can also reach out to users who have commented on your post. Reach out to various influencers with hopes of gaining more exposure for your content.After you have done all of these things, you can then think of a better way to manage your content from this point forward. Plan ahead for your blog posts. Try not to publish too many articles when you are in doubt of their quality. Remember that people and search engines alike care more about quality more than quantity. Learn from your mistakes so that you can create better content from this point on.