We all know by now that blogging is no easy feat. As bloggers, you put in a lot of effort to put forth valuable content to keep your readers coming back.
However, as your blog matures and the world inevitably changes, you may find that your original content is no longer relevant or could use a refresh. It happens to the best of us!
But how do you go about updating your content without taking a hit to your SEO? That's exactly what we're going to cover today. ?
Why should you update old content?
As bloggers, one of our responsibilities is to make sure that our content remains relevant to our readers. If you have a lot of posts, that may seem like a herculean task. ?
However! There are a couple of silver linings here:
- Building trust with your readers—if they can rely on you to keep your content up-to-date, that will solidify your blog as their go-to!
- You can give your under-performing posts a boost in traffic.
Here at WP Tasty, we do our best to go through and audit our blog posts to ensure that we're providing you with the most up-to-date content (think: Google and Pinterest's bevy of changes). For example, we always like to keep up with Pinterest's image size recommendations and we update our image size post with their image specs accordingly!
Note: Sometimes, you don't necessarily need to update the copy within your blog post—if you have the itch to include more informative photos or photos of higher quality (put those newfound photography skills to the test!), you're welcome to do that as well. ?
Identifying content that needs a refresh
So how do you know which posts you should go in and update? After all, you've already got so much on your plate. The thought of going through all of your posts to nitpick and see which parts need to be updated probably wants to send you running for the hills. ?
The good news is that you don't have to add that to your ever-growing checklist. We recommend keeping the following in mind:
- Find medium to low-ranked posts with search potential, AKA posts that rank anywhere from 5-30 in Google Search Results. Google Search Console, which is available to all site owners for free, can give you a good glimpse into your rankings.
- Find posts that have seen a dip in traffic within the last 90 days. The key here is to ignore the seasonal posts. After all, Christmas recipes won't perform as well in July as they did in November or December!
- Remember how we said to ignore seasonal posts up there? Well, you're also going to want to carve out some time to review those as well to see if they need a refresh.
Tips for updating your content
Okay, now that we've covered how to identify the posts that need a fresh coat of paint, it's time to actually take some action.
The key here is to figure out what needs updating. What was missing from your post and how can you improve upon it now?
Keep in mind that each post you update should get its own special treatment. ? What works for one post may not work for the other.
So with that, let's go through some tips for updating your content!
Keeping the same publish date
If you're going through the process of updating a post, chances are you're wondering what to do with the post's publish date. Should you let it live where it lives or should you move it up to the front?
First, you should decide if you'll be shooting new images for the post. If you are, for food bloggers, we recommend pushing the post to the forefront because that means the recipe was likely pretty old and could use an updated date.
If you use Tasty Recipes, we make it super easy for you to update your recipe without updating the entire post—just hit the Quick Edit button and edit the recipe card from there!
Another point to keep in mind: even if you haven't included any new images, you may want to get more eyes on the post or recipe. You may want to remind your readers that this post exists and that you've made some updates to it. Let that post get its time in the limelight! ⭐
The higher the rank, the more conservative the change
If you're looking to make changes to a post that ranks really high in search results, we recommend being careful not to change too much since it's already performing so well. If you need to, you can make some small changes and optimize it for SEO to make it more useful for people who are searching for it in Google.
If you're a Tasty Recipes user, this would be a good use case for the Quick Edit feature as it allows you to make those teensy edits without having to worry about any impacts this can have on your post's SEO.
On the other hand, if a post ranks very low, you don't really have much to lose by making updates, so the only way to go from here is up! It can also be really satisfying to see the changes that you make translate into a boost in search rankings. ?
Find out what the top-ranking pages are doing right
This one is pretty self-explanatory. If you're looking to update a post that ranks a little lower, it might be worth looking into some of the top-ranking pages with similar content.
Now, that doesn't mean that you should copy the format of their post, but you can apply what you learned to your own content! For example, maybe you'll see that you weren't using enough keywords in your post or your recipe could do with more process photos and an FAQ section.
Let your readers know!
Once you've updated the post and you're feeling good about it, the next step is to show off those updates to the world.
If you've added new images to the post or a video, feel free to share those out on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. That way, you're reminding your readers that the post is on the blog and they can look forward to seeing the updates you've made.
We hope you find this post helpful as you go through and go through your existing content!
