Make The Most Of Your Best Quality Content
We are constantly striving to create fresh, engaging content as a linchpin of our SEO efforts. But that does not have to mean discarding existing content.
Anyone who knows anything about digital marketing will tell you how important it is to create content that is relevant, engaging and fresh. One of the golden rules of SEO is to create content that your target audience will want to read- that will improve traffic and drive you higher up the results page.
It can be frustrating, therefore, if you have created some fantastic content that is doing just that, but you feel it is getting old, particularly if it remains as popular and relevant as the day you published it.
You might feel that any content has to be pensioned off sooner or later, but that is where a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. SEO experts know that one of the most important, yet overlooked, aspects to SEO optimised content is to think about the content you already have, and to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Good quality content need not become bad with age, and there are ways to refresh and reuse those articles and blogs that have been a proven success.
Benefits Of Republishing
While current affairs and news items are always changing, there is a great deal of content all over the internet that is weeks, months and even years old, but contains information that is still relevant and useful to your readers.
From a guide to making the perfect spaghetti bolognese to a feature on the wonders of an African safari, we can all think of some top quality pages we have read, that we would not hesitate to share with others years later. If you have some pages like these, it seems ridiculous to throw them away.
Of course, as time goes by, the hits go down, so it is still necessary to republish these classics, in just the same way as any visit to a bookshop will show a new edition of Pride and Prejudice or Bleak House.
Some people worry unduly that republishing the same piece is “cheating” in some way, and that visitors will catch them out. The simple fact is, however, that if a piece of content provides what people are looking for, then it is worth reminding the world that it is there. The fact that it is being reissued can even be emphasised as a positive. Companies are increasingly making use of the “back by popular demand” phenomenon to emphasise that the piece is so good, it is being republished.
Choose Wisely
There is, of course, a balance to be drawn, as the last thing you want is for your website to look like the online equivalent of a freeview television channel that is constantly rerunning the same old TV shows.
The best strategy is to identify those pieces that have proved the most popular and successful in driving traffic to your website and converting visitors into customers.
Of course, it is simple for the Stephen Kings and J K Rowlings of this world to know which of their content is worthy of republishing, but how can a marketer choose the best items of web content from their collection?
This is where Google Analytics can come to your assistance. Within the reports, you can find everything you need to know about which pages are the most successful in different aspects of your campaign.
Refresh Or Reissue?
The final question is what changes you need to make to ensure your content remains as popular second time round.
This really depends on the content itself. If it contains any links or statistics, then you will need to update these as appropriate, but otherwise it is often a case of leaving well alone and not breaking a winning formula.