Key Takeaways
- If you aren’t sure if you need a content refresh, there are a few factors that could help you decide that it’s time to clean up your content.
- If your content is old and out of date, it should be updated to reflect current facts and information.
- Content with high visibility and low engagement is definitely due to be refreshed in a way that focuses on making it more engaging to readers.
- On the other hand, content with low visibility and high engagement could also stand for a fine-tuning to help draw new traffic to it.
Your on-site content does a lot of heavy lifting for your content marketing strategy. You’re proving expertise to search engines, providing your audience with helpful information, driving traffic, and giving potential clients and customers an idea of what your business is all about.
There’s no doubt that keeping an active, consistently posting blog on your site is a good idea, but if you’ve been in the blogging game for a while now, you might be wondering when the right time to refresh that content is. “Content decay” is real; without a refresh, it’s sure to set in. It’s not represented by a sudden tanking, but rather a gradual droop.
Let’s take a look at a few signs that might indicate your blog content is ready for a refresh.
It’s out of date
If you set something down and don’t move or touch it, it’s going to collect dust. The same goes for web content – and we’ll tell you for certain that search engines aren’t a fan of dust. Leaving too many pages on your website stagnant isn’t going to do your SERP any favors.
While content pruning can help eliminate older posts that aren’t doing your site any favors anymore, you don’t need to toss away a post just because it’s old. A relevant post that isn’t getting as much attention as it used to, both in terms of engagement and keyword rankings, is a prime candidate for a refresh.
If a post is older, and still does well, a key part of your refresh should be ensuring that it is timely. Double-check that statistics are up to date, everything mentioned is still correct – this can be essential in fields like science or technology, where a few years can make a huge difference – and that all of your external and internal links still lead to valid pages.
Beyond that, taking a good look at the body content itself and updating it as needed might be the improvement the post needs to get it back in fighting shape.
High visibility, low engagement
If you check in on your search engine ranking metrics and find that your blog post is hitting the first page on a few relevant keywords, but not seeing those rankings turn into engagement, it’s time for a content refresh.
What does low engagement on a page look like? Low engagement on a blog post takes the form of low click-through rates, relatively few clicks on your calls to action (CTA), a high bounce rate, or people clicking on your blog post but not spending much time there.
This is when you need to take a step back and really examine your content. Look with a critical eye, here, and decide where there might be opportunities to make this blog post more engaging to your audience.
How to boost engagement on a blog post
Here are a few starting points for when you’re experiencing low engagement on high-visibility posts.
| PROBLEM | POSSIBLE FIX |
Low click-through-rate | Ranking on page one but not seeing any click-through? The trouble may be that people are seeing your post, but are disinterested in engaging with it for one reason or another. Update your title and meta description. |
High bounce rate/low sessions | If people are leaving the page in a flash and never actually lingering and reading, take a look at the content itself – it should be helpful, clear, and concise. The structure of the page, as well, should be readable and navigable. This might also be a good time to fine-tune your site’s load time. |
| Low comments or shares | Is your content relevant and informative? Does it answer your audience’s frequently asked questions? There’s no single easy step for this, as every blog post is different, but there’s one thing we’ll always recommend: be original! The best way to gain traction is to craft content that’s worth sharing around; originality will win the day in this regard. |
| An ignored CTA | You should only include one CTA in a blog post, so you’ve got one shot to make it count. The anatomy of a good CTA contains a clear message, an actionable task, and an outline of how the reader will benefit from following it. |
Low visibility, high engagement
As opposed to the above, a blog post with low visibility but high engagement does not rank in search results, but keeps readers hooked when they land on it. Usually, this is because the blog post is linked elsewhere, such as on social media or as an internal link in a blog post with higher visibility. Maybe it used to perform well, and some readers bookmarked it so they can come back to it, as is especially popular with tutorials, recipes, or ‘how-to’ posts. Regardless, it’s not pulling in as many new visitors as it could.
Refreshing this kind of blog post can be a careful dance – you don’t want to risk editing the content in a way that will turn the readers back off, since they’re clearly enjoying it when they can find it. However, a refresh could be just what that perfect piece of content needs to make it excel.
Revisit your keyword research and find out what relevant, high-volume, informative keywords this post could target. From there, find ways to seamlessly, naturally slide the keywords into the text and headings. Avoiding keyword stuffing can be a slippery slope, and making the text feel unnatural might flip that engagement right back around in the wrong direction.
Remember that online content should be written by people, for people, and add your keywords from a reader’s perspective, not a search engine’s.
Spamming your paragraphs with the same keyword repeatedly is clunky, repetitive, and, frankly, obviously written in an attempt to nab a top search result, not actually engage or help a reader.
Refresh and Redefine
If you’re confident that your blog content needs a refresh, the task may seem daunting if you’ve never done it before. How do you refresh content without rewriting it? What makes for a good CTA? How do you balance your keywords?
This might be the time to call in an expert. At Redefine Marketing Group, we know our way around blog content – from writing it, to pruning and refreshing it! We’ve got the keyword research know-how and SEO expertise to help your old content bounce back – and help with so much more, too! Contact us today to learn how we can help you reach your organic growth goals through content marketing, SEO, social media and more.
