How To Update Old Content for SEO

We often hear “it is better to update old content than it is to publish new content,” but why? One of the core reasons is that less effort is required in updating an existing piece than creating an entirely new piece of content. Another reason is that the existing piece of content likely already has some backlinks and page authority. However, knowing what content to update, when to update content, and how to update content can be very difficult.

Prioritizing Content to Update

You want to maximize the amount of traffic you gain as a ratio of the amount of time you spend. The best way to optimize returns is through effective prioritizing. My favorite place to start is through historical date on Google Search Console.

Start by creating a comparison from the last 6 months to the period prior

Next, you will want to go to the export button and get the data into Google Sheets

In the google sheet, go to the pages tab and add a column after column C where you add the formula =B2/C2 into the D2 cell. This is so that you can get a comparison of the last 6 months vs the previous period. It should look like this

Every article that has less than 100% in column D is an article that lost organic traffic in that time period. I recommend you go through and look at each article to try to determine why it lost traffic. Oftentimes, it is a piece of content that is just seasonal. If you have an article called “best Christmas songs” of course it will go down in traffic after Christmas season.

However, if you have a piece of unseasonal evergreen content that dropped in traffic, it is likely due to loss in positions. You can also compare the positions and CTR columns in the table to explore further, but I like to manually check the search results for all top articles anyways.

If you have concluded that you lost traffic due to lost rankings, this means that the articles are excellent choices to be prioritized in updating.

How to update old content

Google chose “better” content to outrank your old content. Click into the articles that are now position 1, 2, and 3 to see how that content compares to yours. Do they include sections that your content lacks? Are they longer? Are they shorter? Is it higher quality? Does it include pictures or expert quotes? Put your content side by side with the top content and see what the difference is.

If you sincerely think your page is a lot better than the others, then your competitors might have better backlinks. Go build some backlinks.

When To Update Old Content

Koray Gubur says to update content every 6 months. While this is ideal, not everyone has the time resources to do this, so we have to prioritize what content we update. I would say to focus on updating content when it drops in rankings.

If an article previously ranked for a keyword, it shows that the article is capable of ranking high. Sometimes when you publish a piece of content, it never reaches the first page of google for the target keyword. However, if you ranked for it previously, it is highly likely you can regain that spot.

If your article is still ranking #1 on Google, I would not recommend updating it or changing it drastically. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. There isn’t any more traffic to gain if you’re #1 already.