Stale SEO marketing content, in blogs, social media posts or on your website, can degrade your search engine rankings.
Even worse, it can send your customers and prospects elsewhere, in search of something new and timely to read.
To remain relevant with the search engines as well as your audience, you must add fresh, engaging content regularly. But what about your old content? Should you leave it where it is? Update it? Get rid of it?
Google’s current algorithms reward fresh, original content of any type, including text, images, videos, and so on. Google also likes subject matter that references trending topics or recent events. SEO marketing experts recommend balancing your content between trending and timeless topics.
What’s really important is consistency in generating and posting new content.
Too many companies go gung-ho creating new material, only to let their enthusiasm taper off and die. Your page rankings will benefit most if you can increase your frequency of fresh posts. If you can’t muster that effort, at least be consistent.
At minimum, you should post one or more significant pieces of content (a 400-plus-word blog, for example) each week. But two or more each week, if the items are appropriately optimized for maximum SEO benefit, will put you on the fast track up the rankings.
Ideally, your online marketing strategy should include adding both highly topical and timeless content regularly.
Trendy content goes stale quickly, but Google loves it. Timeless topics (known in our industry as evergreen content) can provide SEO benefits over the long term, as long as you give them periodic love and attention.
For those items that perform well analytically, revisit them every six to 12 months. At that time, you can determine the best course of action for each piece.
If your content invites conversation with your customers and prospects, watch for comments and engagement to taper off. For a more scientific approach to identifying SEO marketing content that’s gone stale, study your Google Analytics data.
Sometimes, however, the best judge of content relevance is you.
Make revisiting and rereading your content a regular part of your marketing efforts. Even if an older post is still generating frequent page views and robust interaction, it should be updated if it’s no longer accurate.
For example, if you have a 2-year-old post about a product or service you no longer offer, you should update or replace that content. If it’s still ranking well, however, you may resist upsetting the apple cart.
But you don’t have to throw the piece away — simply update it. You can still mention the old product or service, but offer a replacement for it.
For content that’s old but still good, you can explore a variety of other updating options.
If you believe your content is still relevant and timely, you can try giving it a boost.
Promote older-but-still-relevant content with social media posts. Or link to the older content in new pieces. Check the page title and description tags, as well as the meta tags, to see if they’re relevant.
You can update a specific SEO marketing content item by giving it a rewrite, or by replacing it with a newly written piece on the same topic. Be sure you’re using a very similar topic and message, however. Otherwise Google might not take kindly to the change.
If you leave stale content where it is, try promoting it in different channels or on different platforms. For example, if it’s a blog about real estate services, add a brief video that delves more deeply into a subtopic of the blog, or that illustrates a key point.
Promote the video across your online platforms, and the old blog will enjoy the revitalization efforts.
We know that a steady stream of fresh, high-quality content is the most effective way to make Google happy, and to protect or improve your position in the search engine rankings.
The key phrase here is high-quality content. If you sacrifice quality for quantity, you’ll do more harm than good.
Many companies that actively post new content become frustrated when they don’t see any improvement in their page rankings. The problem for them is not the frequency with which they post new blogs, e-books, articles or info on social media. The problem is that they aren’t posting content that is optimized for SEO marketing.
This is where a professional SEO company or online marketing specialist can make all the difference in the world.
At Be Locally SEO, we’re always on top of the evolving tricks of the trade. Google, Yahoo and Facebook change their algorithms and ranking systems almost constantly. What worked well to improve your search engine rankings even a few months ago may not work today.
Our proven approach to SEO marketing involves a delicate balance of keyword research, professionally written content and on-page optimization. Add to that the complex process of cross-promotion, and the formula begins to prove its value.
Of course, we can’t forget the importance of leveraging today’s local focus, especially when pursuing the elusive Google rankings.
At Be Locally SEO, our exclusive methods of content creation and promotion are only a part of the SEO optimization equation, but they’re a critical part. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you keep your content fresh and effective to boost your overall SEO marketing efforts.