Does updating old blog posts really help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Hi, i'm wondering if updating old blog posts really help with SEO? I'm asking this because I read everywhere that updating your old blog posts with new information can help it improve the rankings. However, I tried this on one of my old posts that use to rank on the first page, and now the post is slowly losing rank day by day. I'm wondering what I did wrong? All I simply did was update with some newer information that was relevant to the post but I am going down in rank each and every day. My post was originally on page 2 and now it has fallen to page 4. This has confused me a bunch, so any tips would be greatly appreciated. 42 💬🗨
Barryshocks From my experience it should help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I've updated multiple old blog posts with new information which improved the Google rank of the page. Maybe you changed too much on the blogpost and Google doesn't think it's relevant to the subject (keyphrase) anymore? Most of the times if i update a old blogpost, i'll add a little bits of information. randomvariable10 I am currently working with an education client, and over the last 6 months, we worked on updating their top 100 pages, and there are pages that have dropped by nearly 40%, and then there are pages that have seen an increment by nearly 350%, with an average increment of nearly 50% traffic year on year. The point being, 1 page is not a data set that you can rely on. You need to have at least 20-25 pages that you have optimized before you say "x works" or "x doesn't work" The idea with optimization is adding value according to what consumers of your industry want today. Look at what the top pages in your niche for that specific set of keywords and map out where you are lagging. Create a topic wise structure of what's missing, including how many potential featured snippets you would want to add, and then update the content. That would work out better. propelguru01 Updating an old blog post can help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), as long as you update the copy instead of just changing the style or adding new images. It's not just about editing a post to improve SEO, and you need to optimize the post. You need to research your current keyword research and learn how to write your post, and better organize it to match what people are searching for. You can do it with a new post, of course, but if you've already written content, why not update it to make it better? bbax51 Be careful when changing content when you are ranking on the first two pages of Google. Especially on first. It's always ok to add additional content as long as it doesn't move away from the original topic relevance and doesn't introduce terms which could confuse Google on what your page is. If your page is properly optimized and is ranking well, there is no need to change any of the content unless necessary. There is probably more to lose than to gain. If you do make changes to the content, expect rankings to move down or drop completely a few times before it moves to its new position. Usually takes about 2-3 weeks to see the effects. milamber84906 As others have said, you can't just rearrange content or do small changes. I routinely check pages that are performing just ok on Google Search Console (GSC), see what keywords are driving the actual traffic to the page, and expand content based on those keywords. Always make sure you're adding content related to your highest clicked keywords, otherwise you're going to assume that the content is relevant, but maybe it's not exactly what the searcher is looking for. MinimalistLifestyle It helps and it maintains. It helps because you're already starting with a lot of content, so updating, making it better, and adding to the article means if you start with 1,500 words and only add 500 words to it, you basically get a brand new 2,000 word article for the effort of a 500 word article. Rinse and repeat year after year and your small article turns into a full fledged authoritative guide. If you have an article that is bringing in very little traffic, just repurpose it for another keyword and 301 to a better url for that keyword (provided it's a couple years old and still doing nothing). Change out the images, rewrite it a bit, add some content, then check it again in a year to see if it's ranking for your new keyword. If your article is already ranking well, updating it helps to maintain top rankings. I have some pages that have ranked #1 for 12 years. Those pages are hardly recognizable from what they began as 12 years ago. New content and making old content better should be given equal importance for sites more than 2-3 years old.
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femstic Well… When the page is already ranking, you don't need to touch it at all. You should have update other post that is not ranking. You don't know maybe what you edited is what is bringing visitors to that post. You suppose to analyze the page first to know if there is any SEO error before you try that.
GeologistDapper672 It depends a lot. I have many articles in my affiliate site in finance niche that rank #1 but I check them every month to be sure that the information is still exact and up-to-date. I update them if needed. Then there are articles that I have not touched for years because information is evergreen and nothing has changed. Its good to update if there is something that has to be updated. But it does not make any sense to update just because of updating. Serve the user with the best and most up-to-date content possible and Google likes you too.
theonetechnologies1 It's a good strategy to update the old content. Google will definitely be going to notice that and boost the ranking. Maybe you have reduced the density of the keyword on which your blog was ranking. That may be the issue, your blog ranking was going down for that keyword but maybe it goes up for some other keywords. Secondly, I have noticed most of the bloggers used year in the meta title or in their content and every year they just make bit changes in the content especially in statistics, and just changed the year and their content gets ranked. Thirdly, it good to update the old content but to what extent, you may change the statistics or you may include additional points or remove the obsolete information. If you change the blog to an extent, Google may take your blog in a different context Lastly, as one of the users said it doesn't apply to one blog, you should update the blogs at a large scale and then see the results. So, according to me, it's always a good practice to update your blog because Google likes fresh content if you don't update it, one day it will be outranked by your competitors. So, keep updating your blog even a little and not only check ranking but also look for the traffic after updating your blog, AdorableFlight Yep, we used an SEO company that essentially created spun blog posts and we started to lose a lot of traffic. We rewrote all blog posts with Frase and SurferSEO, included a FAQ accordion. Used proper heading structure + compelling images and alt tags that are not keyword stuffed. We have seen a 600% increase in traffic in a year and our money pages were boosted without the need to build direct links. vineet19del It helps if you understand the searcher's intent. See if you have covered everything that can possibly be related to the main topic. If not, you can add the sub-topics that are closely related to the main topic & are relevant. Check Search Console to see for what additional "Queries" your article is getting Impressions & showing up somewhere on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). It can give you good clues as to which additional sections you should focus on. Once you have improved your article as per the search intent, make sure to build few internal links from relevant places on your site but don't over-optimize or don't overdo keyword-rich anchors, also if possible build few backlinks from relevant sites. It will work :) sactownproud Yes it does. It's a big part of my strategy. What hasn't seem to be mentioned here though is the Click Through Rate (CTR) lift you'll see. Even if we saw position hold after updating an old post, having that fresh date resulted in pretty big CTR gains AnnaC_00 Yes to what everyone says and also update blog content to make it more relevant and also to add information that wasn't there before or also to cite relevant sources (open on new window, of course). As a lot of folks have said, rinse and repeat. webby_central If you're not driving traffic to your old blog posts, you are slashing your Return of Investment (RoI) dramatically. It doesn't make sense to spend lots of hours or hundreds of dollars creating a new blog post and then letting it die, once it rolls off your front page. Your content marketing should still get search results and search engine optimization from older posts. In fact, a seasoned blog post can generate organic traffic.. Always remember your old posts are the key to growing your blog and taking your business to the next level.
