Why Should You Refresh Content

Are you constantly striving to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and advancements in technology, fashion, and consumer behavior? Living in a fast-paced world certainly has its perks, but it also comes at a cost. As soon as the latest and greatest becomes the norm, it quickly becomes outdated and stale. Remember when Nokia ruled the mobile phone market, or when physical newspapers were a household staple? It’s important to stay on top of these changes and evolve with the times to remain relevant.

Even Apple, one of the world’s most innovative companies, understands the importance of constantly updating its features to keep its consumers engaged. The same goes for blogging. You could create the most informative and engaging content imaginable, but without regular updates and revisions, it will quickly lose its luster. Can you imagine a comprehensive blog post from the 1990s about earning money online being just as impressive today?

To stay ahead of the game and keep your audience coming back for more, you need to refresh your content on a regular basis. This means staying on top of the latest trends, identifying new topics to explore, and updating existing content to reflect current events and developments. By doing so, you’ll establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, build a loyal readership, and keep your content fresh and exciting. So why not start revamping your blog today and keep up with the ever-changing landscape of the digital world?

Keep reading to find out why updating your blog posts, articles, and web pages on a regular basis can help you stay relevant, attract new readers, and keep your existing audience engaged.

Improved SEO Practices

SEO practices are ever-changing and that means that your once perfectly optimised post may now be outdated and damaging its potential success. 

Refreshing your content gives you an opportunity to put optimal SEO practices into place and increase your chances of ranking highly. This could include things such as adding long-tail keywords, including alt text, changing your URL structure, optimising images, and so on.

A copywriting service like Content Conga can help with this as you’ll be receiving content that is designed by a professional who is up to date with the latest best SEO practices.

Increased Competition

As the internet continues to grow and more people realise the potential of online business, there is an increase in competition for spaces at the top of search results.

Finding your niche is wonderful when you’re a big fish in a small pond. However, it can be much more difficult to compete when you suddenly find yourself in a huge pond with lots of other big fish.

Refreshing your content allows you to make sure that you’re providing your readers with the most comprehensive information available. If someone else comes along and expands or improves upon your work, your content can quickly become stale. 

However, it is important not to neglect newer content throughout the time you spend refreshing your old work. Placing a copywriting order can keep things ticking over nicely so you’re getting the best of both worlds. 

Increased Engagement

It can be exciting to publish a new post and see your readers flock to it to increase views, shares, and comments. However, the initial buzz can fade once everyone has had their say, and you then find yourself having to research something new to post about to start the cycle over again.

This is great because new content expands your website and keeps viewers engaged, but you don’t always have to find a new subject to discuss. 

Refreshing your previous posts allows you to add new information or even change your mind about an opinion you put forward previously. This then gives you an opportunity to share your updates on social media which can bring back previous readers as well as entice new people to engage with your content.

Remain Relevant

Remaining relevant is a challenge for most websites. Even if you ignore the competition and focus solely on your content, it can quickly become outdated and in need of a refresh.

Let’s say you’ve posted an article about the best budget televisions available to buy online. It’s only a matter of time before newer models and better deals are released. If you’re not updating your content, then your readers are quickly going to find the updated information they’re looking for elsewhere. 

Businesses should pay note to this because you can guarantee that the competition is trying to remain relevant by regularly updating their blog with the newest information available about products and services. The key to success is providing the most up to date content possible to remain relevant in such a fast-paced world.

Improve Your CTR

If you want to know how your posts are performing then you need to be checking out your Google Search Console. If you look at the analytics here you can see the click-through rate that you are achieving. 

It may be that at the time a piece was written it looked great in your eyes. It could be that you published and then simply forgot about it. After all, running a business is certainly time-consuming. There are so many tasks to stay on top of and once one piece of content has been published, it’s time to move on to the next.

Taking the time to review your CTR means that you can save your posts that have potential. Perhaps your post is great but you need to tweak the keywords. It could be that your headline isn’t grabbing the attention the article deserves. Refreshing content can be as simple as a change of headline. A simple change like this can give your post a real boost. 

Poorly Written Content

You know that you need to be adding content to your site on a regular basis. You balance this alongside numerous other duties and at times a day can just run away from you. We’ve all been there. The problem is that during these times the pressure is on. We complete our posts as quickly as possible and click publish so we can tick them off our to-do lists.

If we aren’t re-visiting old content, we may be missing out on the fact that it is littered with mistakes. There could be issues with spelling. Problems with grammar. There may even be some glaring typos that add unintentional amusement.

While these mistakes may not seem to be a huge issue, they do affect your business. Readers who spot these mistakes will form an opinion of your company. It makes you appear lazy, sloppy, and perhaps uncaring. Refreshing content allows you to address past mistakes. 

Review Links

Have you ever been reading a blog post, gone to follow a link, only to find that the content no longer exists? Frustrating, isn’t it? By refreshing your content, you are taking the time to revisit some of the external links in your piece and to ensure that they are still working. It is not just about external links though.

As you have been producing content, the chances are that you have been creating internal links too. The problem is that when your early content was produced there was probably little that you could link to. As time has gone on your posts have increased in number and there is now more opportunity to link back to your own content.

These internal links are important as they assist Google. It allows this search engine to see exactly what your site is about and it can help with rankings. Well written anchor text makes things clear for Google so that it can see the relevance of your links. 

Add Images

When you first created your blog post, it may be that you have generated a wall of text. This could well be full of great content and it may also be loved by Google. The issue arises when a reader hits this wall. It can be difficult to read a blog post that consists of nothing but text. With humans having what appears to be a dwindling attention span, there needs to be something to break up the text. Pictures are the perfect solution.

We wouldn’t recommend adding images just for the sake of it. Relevant images can help to keep a readers attention. It can break up the text, making it easier to follow, as well as engaging the other part of their brain so that they remain engaged.

You can even rank your images with Google. If you ensure that your file names are descriptive and that your Alt text is relevant, then your images could be appearing in search results. 

Save Time

One of the key reasons that businesses have blogs in the first place is because Google loves them. Yes, blogs contain engaging content and should be written for the reader first, but the truth is that Google will reward us for our blogs. Why? Because Google loves to see fresh content appearing and blogs are the best way to do this.

Writing new pieces can be time-consuming. By the time you have carried out the research, written the content, proofread, and published suddenly there is little time left to do anything else. Existing content can save you plenty of time.

It is quicker to revisit and refresh old content than it is to create something fresh. As far as Google is concerned, your refreshed article still contains fresh content so you can still bring benefits to your site by taking this approach. 

A Second Chance

Have you ever produced what you think is your finest blog post yet only for it to fall flat on its face? If so, then we assure you that you are not alone. It can certainly be frustrating when it happens, but often we are so busy that we just jump straight across to the next piece of content and our potential masterpiece is left to die by the wayside.

If you are sure that this post was great in the first place then surely it deserves a second chance? It could be that your title isn’t quite right. You may have fallen down when it comes to optimisation. Perhaps you didn’t promote your piece very well. It could even be that it was just a matter of timing and no one needed that content just then.

If your blog post was great then there will be a simple explanation as to why it didn’t take off. Refreshing existing content like this gives it a second chance and allows you to get it seen. 

How To Refresh Your Content 

We’re sure that you can see the benefits of refreshing your content and no doubt this is something that you’re keen to jump into. If your site has been around for a while now, it may seem a little daunting and you may not be sure where to start. Here are some tips to help:

Carry out a content audit

If you have an extensive catalogue of content, refreshing all of this is going to be a huge task. Conducting a content audit can help you to identify where to start and which pieces will give you the biggest impact.

You can start by looking at older posts that have perhaps lost traffic. Are the topics still relevant? Do the keywords need tweaking? Will refreshing the content give it a second lease of life? If the content was once receiving plenty of traffic it is probably easier to regain this rather than start with posts that never really took off in the first place. 

Create a process

Looking at each piece of content is pointless unless you know what you are looking for. Each piece of content will have its own unique features and some will require more work than others. Creating a checklist allows you to see the best way forward when it comes to refreshing content. This could include things such as:

• Checking the relevance of your keywords
• Reviewing your headline
• Updating images
• Checking all links 
• Review your meta descriptions
• Review alt text on your images

The Key Takeaway?

Refreshing content works! By revisiting your existing content you are able to increase engagement and bring in a whole new audience. Yes, fresh content matters too but with your existing content, you have already won half of the battle. 

It may be a few years old now, but one report shows how a company gained 500,000 new page views by refreshing its existing content. If that sounds good then it may be time to start reviewing your content. If this is something where you need assistance and a professional touch, why not give us a try and let us show you what we can do?