Increase organic traffic by updating old content

Cristian Level X³

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November 4, 2017, 6:16 pm

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Increase organic traffic by updating old content

How I managed to increase organic traffic from 3000 monthly sessions to 20.000+ monthly sessions in just 12 months by applying only one SEO tactic: updating old content.

When I first took this client, neither of us knew what to expect. It was a medical niche based website with lots of articles, all written over the years and all around medical keywords. 

The SEO work done before me we decent although the content wasn't very optimized and the general rule was: "the more content, the better." 

After analyzing everything, I concluded that this website could benefit a lot with only one type of SEO tactic: optimizing old content, updating it and merge articles when necessary. 

Of course, the client becomes hugely defensive because over time he paid a lot of money to copywriters to gain all that content and now I was telling him everything was no good and some of the articles would have to go. 

So, can you increase your organic traffic by applying a similar strategy of updating old content?

First of all, if you have a big website with a lot of content you need to understand this won't be an easy task. You can't do it overnight, and depending on the client budget it may take quite a while to update everything. 

1. Google Analytics is your best friend and should be your first stop. Export all the top 100 pages that drive organic traffic, set a time frame of more than one month. 

Make sure you flag pages that have the same subject. There was an awful practice a couple of years ago when the same subject was written and posted time and time again in different forms. This produces keyword cannibalization and can essentially destroy your chances to rank with most of the duplicate subject articles. You need to have one page per subject or keyword, one complete, high-quality article. 

2. Extract top performing articles based on subject. As I said, you may have multiple articles talking about the same subject. In the end, you will need only one. The article you want to update it is the top performing one that brings in the most organic traffic. 

3. Start updating the top performing articles while you import content from the other, weaker articles. When everything is set and done, you will need to apply a 301 redirect for all the secondary articles to your main updated article. This will transfer all the authority of the secondary articles into one place making it stronger from an SEO perspective. 

4. Make sure you have a complete article. Before you start updating your articles, make sure you implement a comprehensive keyword research for every subject. Your content may be outdated and in need of fresh information, add everything a reader may need into one page. If you are going to work with a copywriter, make sure you provide clear instructions on what keywords to use and which smaller subjects may need to be developed. 

5. Article structure. Pay close attention to your headline and main subheadings, make sure you subheadings target relevant keywords of great importance. Also, include bullet points, numbers, bolded words, italic text, quotes and everything in between, all of this will help with the overall optimization process. 

6. Add pictures, infographics, and videos. This is a significant step. Most old articles have only text or at the most one picture. You need to change that by developing a modern, interactive piece of content! 

7. Learn from your competitors, especially the ones at the top. This is the last step. You can learn a great deal analyzing your competitors! Steal from them ideas that work and make sure you touch points they haven't, in the end; you need to have resulting articles that are more complex, answer more questions and have a higher overall quality. 

This is what I did, and it worked like magic! It takes time and effort, but in the end, I managed to dramatically increase the organic traffic without the need of a single backlink. 

This method was so effective I manage to position myself in the first position for more than 20 keywords and rank on the first page for at least a hundred more.

Comments

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overcast

I think recently I checked out that adding infographics always helps. It can bring new traffic to that post. Also there are some people who make use of the affiliate links. And this means there are times when the organic traffic can slowly be increased. Though some people work really hard to get the new updates on the information. But that's possible if properly worked with. I have personally noticed that old content update with even comment helps too.

0 7 years ago

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gamergurl

They indeed do, and they also offer the extra advantage of being shared online by your visitors (or even you, wink wink ;) ), thus leading into type-in traffic or increased SE traffic. It's very easy and cheap to just hire someone to create niche-related infographics for you, and as long as you keep the PSD files safe you can just re-use them, thus have updates done even cheaper because you can just pay someone to dig up the new data and update the files without any need to re-create them from the scratch.

0 7 years ago

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overcast

This is true point on the PSD Files. I have noticed that many meme pages usually copy and write their own copyright on the top. So that's another thing that may be an issue. I have found that inforgraphics in the slideshare also helps a lot.

0 6 years ago

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vinaya

Updating contents means, adding fresh lines/paragraphs or removing lines/paragraphs, providing new/relevant information, adding new images, infographics etc. Updating contents can be as simple as doing minor edits or as vast as tweaking the title, adding new focus keywords, adding a new section or removing the entire section etc.

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overcast

I think google pay attention to updates. So I think few lines won't cut it. In fact I think let's say 700 words need to be increased to 1000 words in that case. That way the updating of the old content may be easy. But it takes time In my opinion.

0 6 years ago

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vinaya

Google pays attention to the updates. If you update three years old content, instead of the original publishing date, Gooogle will provide the date of your recent update while listing your content in the search index. People love fresh contents, so does Google. In my opinion, while updating you should never focus on how many words you are going to add, instead, you should think about what new information you are going to provide.

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overcast

I have found that people who consistently change the content and add something new. They are likely to get better google treatment. And people most of the time are likely to visit those pages too. I guess we learn from the experience here. And so far I am trying that on hubpages.

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sanaamaan

Yes this a question, how increase my organic traffic,
www.thescientificworld.ml

0 6 years ago

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Corzhens

I am not comfortable with the topic of this discussion because for me a published content should not be touched much more when you change the sentences. I agree that adding images and maybe even videos will enhance the web page but changing the text will not do you good. Even if it is not a blog, it is still not a good idea to change the contents of your site simply because what is published is already published and you can just make an addendum but not changing a paragraph.

0 5 years ago

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augusta

It has always been the way to go for me, I learned this from an old blogger friend.She told me I could be updating my old content and makes it new and optimized it to be more search engine friendly to drive traffic.It has been working fine for me and still researching to bring my blog to standard.Thanks for the added knowledge.

0 7 years ago

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Everett

Updating content is just not only good for seo but also good in case a change of information about the topic you were initally blogging about. There is many blog posts that are not relevant to today's standards because of the change in information, or the service/product the author was writing about simply does not exist anymore, which creates a blog post that is basically worthless. Now to keep outdated, and irrelevant posts is the writer's decision. I would probably remove them, even if they are driving a bit of traffic to my blog.

Now in terms of SEO for old posts, you can either kill it by bringing in the traffic from organic search, or kill the SEO of the post by not doing the correct SEO. You would need to do a lot of keyword research to make sure you're getting the traffic for your targeted keywords. If you change these money making keywords, then you risk not benefiting from organic search.

However, if you are great with SEO and know exactly what you are doing then you are good to go.

0 7 years ago

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sanaamaan

Thanks for suitable suggestions,
www.thescientificworld.ml

0 6 years ago

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potentialwriter

I practically found this to be true with my own blog. I used one of my blogs with the title 'Earn Multiple Streams of Income Online' to apply for Google AdSense a couple of years ago. Prior to receiving approval, I read about updating old contents on a blog and applied this on my blog right away. I continued updating old contents as well as kept publishing more articles, not thinking about Adsense at all. I noticed a geometric increase in the organic traffic that was flowing through my blog. I woke up one night and found out that my AdSense application has been approved.

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kgord

Yes, why re invent the wheel everytime when you go to update content? You can make your content evergreen by updating it. It is simply a way to get readers interested in what you have to say again, and attracting more. I see nothing wrong with that at all!

0 7 years ago

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DarthHazard

Thanks for the tip. I'm sure a lot of people will benefit from this. Why should you have multiple articles about the same thing when you can benefit and increase your organic traffic from just having one article for that topic. Unfortunately, it doesn't really affect me because I'm in the gaming niche so we don't really post any duplicate content or content that is extremely similar to a previous post.

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TimothyAlex

I would also suggest reposting old content to social media. If you are writing evergreen content, you can regularly repost to reach new people. Since the half-life of a social media post is so short, it only makes sense.

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wiseagent

The idea of reusing a content by adding new information is always valid, as long as it's something that deserves attention because people are certainly not going to look for old content if they aren't warned in any way (preferably something flashy).

0 7 years ago

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TimothyAlex

That is true for someone who already read the article. However, repurposing is for attracting new visitors.

0 7 years ago

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wiseagent

Yes, for new visitors this works perfectly (like a right glove in your hand)... But the old visitors (who may be your strongest base... depending on the life time of your blog / website) can't - actually, they shouldn't - be forgotten.

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TimothyAlex

I think it depends on how it is done. If you go back and rework the article, add more information, and improve optimization, that will help increase the page's position in search results without old visitors even being aware. However, if you change the publish date and move the article to the top of your list and your front page, then you could see a negative reaction.

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wiseagent

I think exactly like you, everything will really depend on how things will be done. Working with "repeat" content requires a good degree of creativity (because a bad "marketing" idea can ruin good content).

0 7 years ago

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overcast

Yes reuse can be of different type. You can see that old content such as the inforgraphics and other can be used in many ways. But people have to be taking more of hard work approach for building links for those things. I have learned that updating old content is not an easy task. And one can be surely be working towards attracting people. That should be the aim of the update.

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Judas2018

Very true. One big trick of film sites is to update popular old movie reviews, when they undergo a redesign or an overhaul. So the search engines will have new content to feed on and visitors to those pages can read their favorite reviews or articles with a fresh, new look.

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vinaya

many years ago, when I was learning the nuances of online writing and publishing, my guru told me: you should focus more on successful articles. For example, if you have 100 articles and 20 articles are pulling good traffic and 30 articles are pulling moderate traffic and rest are non-performing, you should work on high traffic and moderate traffic articles. By focusing on already successful articles, you will be pulling more traffic. Google likes old contents that re regularly updated. Therefore, you should update your successful articles and gain trust with google.

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softnwords

THis is tricky thing but the challenge is to track our old content and possible permission to edit it again.I feel it is easy to write new articles which is related to old contents

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Pixie06

I have not really tried to update my old contents but this is something that I can do especially when I can't get any ideas about what to write. Most of my old blog posts do not contain pictures and videos. Including those in my updated posts will make a difference for sure. I do visit other top blogs in my niche and I have to agree that I do get some ideas from them at times.

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Corzhens

When you say updating contents, what comes to my mind is the blog because that is the only experience that I have with contents. An old blog can be updated, all right, but what is the use of it? If only for the SEO ranking to get organic traffic, I don’t think it is worth the trouble. I would rather write a new blog that will conform with the SEO methods that I know and that will surely get more traffic since it is a new blog.

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sanaamaan

Thanks for suitable suggestions, I will follow this tips for my site, http://www.thescientificworld.ml/2018/05/why-do-we-forget-things.html,
thanks again

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sanaamaan

thanks again
https://www.thescientificworld.ml/2018/07/importance-of-food-in-our-daily-life.html?m=1

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