Are you writing brand new articles for your readers to drive organic traffic and rank higher on SERP? The good news is that your older content can rank higher by augmenting it with the right strategies. Even though the older content is stagnated you have put in efforts to research the topic and you don’t want to lose it in the archives. Updating older content is easy with content writing services that streamline efforts to boost SEO, traffic, and revenue streams. This blog discusses the ways in which you can bolster the rankings of your content with the right SEO efforts.
Why Should You Improve The Rankings Of Your Older Content?
- Google algorithm always looks for fresh content to rank higher.
- Your website will be having several articles and older articles might have been pushed back to the second or third page of the SERP. Therefore, efforts are needed to rank it back to the first page.
- Rather than investing time and money to write new articles, it is better to optimize the older content to drive organic content.
Improve rankings of older content
The first thing you have to focus on is finding pages that need to be updated. You can use data analytical tools like google analytics to identify the pages that require optimization. As a first step, look for pages that have the potential to rank on page one. Focus on the content of these pages to improve rankings. The search volume of the keywords you have used in the content can give an idea about the utility of the content. Modify the content and enhance the utility of the content by targeting keywords with more search density.
Rewrite meta title and meta description
Even though meta information is not considered an important factor to rank higher in SERP, its advantage cannot be overlooked. Meta description plays a crucial role in enhancing the organic click-through rate. A good click-through rate gives a positive to the google algorithm to rank better.
The meta title has to be fixed by including keywords with adequate research. Choose low-competition keywords with high volume in the meta title. Make sure that you are including the primary keyword which can help rank the web page better. The character limit of the meta title should not exceed 55.
In the meta description, you have more opportunities to include secondary and LSI keywords. The maximum word count has to be between 155 to 160 words.
While rewriting the meta title and description, your focus should not be confined to just the addition of keywords. The content will rank higher if the meta title and description are made interesting and engaging.
Modify the content
The old content has got stagnated with a substantial decline in website visitors. This shows that your content needs to be modified to cater to the needs of the readers. It should be engaging and has to connect with the readers. Chances are high that your content won’t receive much response from the readers if it is outdated and full of grammar mistakes. Here are a few ways in which you can make your content interesting:
- Research again on the topic of the content and check the relevance of the old content. Remove irrelevant sections from the content and add useful content.
- Try to rewrite the subtopic and add new subheadings to make the content more engaging.
- Enhance the credibility of the content by including testimonials from happy customers. You can also collaborate with industry experts or social media influencers to drive more traffic to the webpage.
- Give references to verifiable sources of information and support the content with statistical data.
- Make the content visually appealing by adding images, infographics, and short videos.
- Break the content into different parts to enhance readability. It is always good to add bullets and numbered lists.
- Go through the websites that are ranking higher on the SERP and implement similar strategies that make them rank high.
Check the internal and external links
Your efforts in updating the content are futile if you are not checking the external and internal links. It is always good to have 5 to 8 interlink links on a page. Make sure that the content on your page link to other relevant pages. The updated content has to be linked from the category archives. This can make sure that your content is not orphaned. You can also link from your homepage to the updated content with the changed published date. When google re-crawls, it identifies the content as newly added content and it can immediately boost your rankings.
The next important step you have to do is to check whether there are any broken links. Broken links are bad for SEO and these can be fixed by partnering with an SEO outsourcing company.
Make sure that the external links you have already given on the page are relevant. You can link the content to a new and more authoritative website to enhance credibility.
Page loading speed matters!
It can happen that the content is excellent and informative but it is not ranking higher on the search results page. It is not just the quality of the content that matters. The search engines consider the time a webpage takes to load. If someone is trying to read the content of your webpage and if it takes forever to load, the reader will leave the website. In such situations, search engines won’t rank those pages higher. Therefore, loading speed is significant in determining your rank on the SERP.
Free website loading speed test tools are available to monitor the speed of your webpage. Ideally, the loading time should not be more than one to two seconds.
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Enhance the user experience
The interaction of the users with your webpage has a great impact on the ranking of the page. There will be a steady increase in organic traffic to your website only if the user experience is excellent. The user experience is measured with metrics such as average time on page, bounce rate and dwell time, etc.
Final Thoughts
Prior to discarding the old content from the webpage, make efforts to revive the content with the right SEO strategies. Achieve the organic traffic potential by partnering with a company outsourcing digital marketing services.
