In this article, you will learn how to update old blog posts for SEO in order to improve google search rankings.
You find a great keyword, you publish a great article on your blog, you even wait for a couple of months like you’re supposed to…
But nothing happens. You check your rankings for the target keyword and find your article languishing out of the top 10. Even after the standard up and down that happens as new content is coming into Google’s index – at positions 28, 35, or 43.
What you do next is critical to your success in an organic traffic business.
Inexperienced SEO’s do nothing. That article “didn’t work”. On to the next one.
But this is the wrong approach. At that point, Google has crawled, indexed, and understood the relevance of your article. They’ve decided your article and your site are worth giving a chance at some traffic.
Seeing this, experienced SEO’s do a lot. Why? Because if you’ve got that far, it usually doesn’t take much to push you into the top 10 where the traffic will really start flowing. Assuming you’ve picked a low competition keyword that is.
How to Refresh Old Post for SEO
What follows is a list of things you can do to take an article that’s ranking inside position 50 and push it into the top 10 spots for low competition keywords… without link building.
These items are ranked in order of overall effectiveness in my testing.
Here it goes:
#1: Deepen the Cluster
If you’ve got a “best list” that seems stuck in position 30, one of the most effective things you can do to improve its rankings is to publish a product review for each product in your list. Why?
- It gives you more internal links to the best list (you’ll link from each product review back to the best list).
- It increases the size of the footprint your site has around that topic, increasing relevance and authority. But most of all, this task is #1 on the list because…
- It gives you the chance at all the new traffic.
Each new article can be a new source of traffic and revenue on top of improving rankings for the original list. Nothing else on the list has that double benefit.
If it’s a product review that’s stuck, publish more reviews on similar products with the same strategy. Or you can publish a “best list” for that category of products.
NOTE: This makes sense to do even if those new keywords don’t represent perfect keyword opportunities by your standard criteria. Of course, still do the keyword research here and start with the lowest competition topics first. But if that main best list is really worth ranking for (high traffic potential), it’s worth publishing the other articles anyway.
#2: Internal Links
Find every opportunity you can to link to this piece of content from other relevant articles on your site.
One page not to neglect here is your homepage. For most of us, it’s the page with the most backlinks and link equity. Find a way to get a link to this important page from your site’s home page and you should see a bump in the important page’s UR in time.
#3: Improve The Article
It’s 3rd on the list because #2 is quicker and #3 has a higher upside, but once those are done, it’s time to make your article better.
Updating Old Blog Posts Seo
There are 100 ways you could do this but in general, these are the things you need to do:
a) Expand it: Read it again and look for questions you haven’t answered or points you haven’t addressed in enough detail. If the quality is high, and the relevance is right, there’s not really an upper limit here. If you can add 5000 words of helpful content to the article, properly addressing the search intent of the main keyword, there can be no downside.
b) Check for what’s missing: Look at the articles ranking above you and ask what they have that you don’t… then add it. When that’s done…
c) Think about what they’re missing: The other ranking articles aren’t perfect. Look at them and ask yourself what they’ve missed. What’s bad about them that can be improved? Add that to your article.
d) Add media: Would images improve this article? Something you could find on a stock photo site? Would YouTube videos? If so, add them.
e) Optimize On-page: I use SurferSEO to get the on-page details right according to what’s currently ranking for the target keyword.
When you’ve completed these steps… next, you wait!
Just like everything in SEO, none of this will have an impact overnight. And the impact will be slower the newer your site is and the lower your Domain and URL Rating.
But watch your rankings for signs of progress after making these changes and decide accordingly on what to do next.
Usually, you’ll do this in rounds. You make a set of these improvements, then wait to see where the page lands over the next 1-3 months. If you want to rank higher than where you’ve landed after that, you can rinse and repeat the process.
That is how easily it can be done!
You also need to take a look at some of your important pages in Google Search Console or Ahrefs. Find the ones that are lingering under position 50 but not inside the top 10, and get to work.
All you need to do next after getting your blog updated is to share your content again and watch your rankings skyrocket. Now that is the way how to update old blog posts for SEO! You can find even more expert advice about updating old blog content on Neil Patel’s Blog.
Let me know how it goes!