Content is an essential component of running any online business. Whether it’s blogs, videos, podcasts, or eBooks, you need to create content if you want to attract and keep your audience.
The information you publish online serves several purposes. It shows your audience that you’re a thought leader in your space, which increases your chances of conversions.
Content also plays a critical role in ensuring people find you online. With the right strategy, you can optimize your posts to appear higher in the search engine results.
But, there’s more to content marketing than churning out endless new blogs. It’s also worth looking back at your previous posts and thinking about how you can update them.
According to one study, marketers get around 80% of their blog traffic from older posts. Learning how to upgrade and enhance those older assets is the key to your success.
Find Your Most Valuable Content
The first step is figuring out which pieces of old content you need to update. News-based posts that focused on a specific trend a few years back probably won’t give you amazing results.
However, your landing pages and lead magnets are valuable because they will convince customers to sign up for your email newsletter.
When updating lead magnets and landing pages, re-assess the content, and put the value for the customer first. If your business has been around for a while, you can add some social proof in the form of reviews and ratings from your clients too.
Other vital content to update will be your most engaging blog posts and articles. These are the pieces that have generated the most traffic and plenty of shares in the past. Look at how you can upgrade that content to be more relevant and informative now.
Reformat Successful Content
While you’re examining your content and looking for your top-performing pieces, keep an eye out for anything that you can reformat.
If you’ve published several blogs about email marketing, or SEO, you can take snippets from each article and create an infographic. That gives you something new to share on your website and social media.
Another excellent way to reformat old content is to transform engaging blog posts and articles into videos and podcasts. Even if you cover the exact same information that’s in your blog posts, creating a different style of content will help you reach new people.
Remember, not everyone who visits your website will want to read an article. There are lots of people who prefer video and audio.
Before you reformat your content, double-check that all the information you’ve included is still relevant and correct.
Focus on Accuracy and Relevancy
When you’re deciding which pieces of content you’ll update, remember that the focus shouldn’t just be on piling more content into your blogs or articles.
Though longer articles often generate more SEO results than shorter ones, the posts you publish need to be full of value. Start by:
- Double-check any facts and statistics. Are there any recent reports and studies that are more relevant to your audience now?
- Respond to customer concerns. If you’ve noticed trending questions or comments on your blog or social media page, update your blog to answer these questions.
- Remove anything that’s not relevant. If any of your content is now outdated or inaccurate, don’t just leave it there to increase the word-count. Remove anything that’s not useful to your customers now.
Look for Content Gaps
Another excellent way to increase the value of your content when you’re updating it is to check other ranking posts that are similar to yours.
Ideally, you’ll have a set of keywords that you’re hoping to rank for attached to every post you create. Researching who is already ranking for these terms will give you an insight into what kind of content is getting the most attention.
You might notice that competing brands have covered topics or sub-sections of a certain idea that you have forgotten to address. Researching your keywords may also give you an insight into pieces of information that your competitors have missed that you can add.
The key to successful content is giving your audience more than they get from your competitors. If you provide an article that is more in-depth and better optimized for your user’s search intent and keywords, search engines will reward it with better rankings too.
If you find that your existing content just isn’t as in-depth as the blogs posted by your competitors, consider combining a few different pieces, as long as they focus on the same topic.
Audit Your Content Regularly
Finally, remember that updating and repurposing old content isn’t just something you should do every couple of years. The digital landscape is constantly changing and evolving alongside the preferences and needs of your customers.
Especially in industries that are changing rapidly, you need to stay up to date. Your readers come to you for trusted and correct information. If they don’t find it, you lose their trust.
That means you need to be willing to update and improve your content as often as you can.
Every few months, look back over your old content and keep an eye out for any pieces that seem to be losing value or traffic. This could be a sign that your content isn’t as engaging as it used to be.
If you don’t have time to audit your content on your own, you could consider hiring a professional to help you. These teams can regularly check your content to ensure that it’s up to date.
Content auditors and managers can also help you examine your old content for SEO issues.
Don’t Underestimate an Update
Writing and producing content is one of the best ways to boost the value of your digital presence.
However, there’s more to this strategy than just posting endless blogs or articles. You need to ensure that you’re constantly refining your website and the content that you share. That’s the only way to earn the respect and continued appreciation of your target market.
