What is Content Decay and How to Keep Your Content Ranking

Wondering what content decay is and how it impacts your content ranking in search engines?

Over time, even the best-performing content can lose its relevance and visibility as trends change and competitors publish fresher material.

I’ve seen this happen firsthand, where articles that once drove significant traffic gradually fall in the rankings.

This gradual decline is known as content decay.

So, to maintain a strong SEO strategy, it’s important to recognize and address content decay before it negatively impacts your search rankings and organic visibility.

In this guide, I’ll explain content decay and how to combat it effectively.

Let’s start with a definition first.

What is Content Decay?

Content decay refers to the gradual loss of traffic, engagement, and visibility of your website’s content over time.

It happens as content becomes outdated, less relevant to users, or overshadowed by fresher content from competitors.

Initially, new content may attract considerable traffic and perform well on search engines. However, as user interests shift and newer, more comprehensive content appears, its performance declines, leading to decayed content.

Search engines, especially Google, strive to provide users with the most relevant, up-to-date content.

And so, once top-ranked pages may lose their position if they no longer satisfy the changing search or keyword intent or fail to offer evergreen cornerstone content.

Why is Content Decay Important for SEO?

Content decay is important because it affects your site’s organic traffic and search rankings.

Remember, search engines are designed to prioritize evergreen content that is fresh, relevant, and authoritative. 

So, when your content starts to decay, your rankings drop, decreasing visibility and fewer clicks.

Neglecting content decay can result in the following:

1. Loss of Organic Traffic

As your content ages and becomes less relevant, search engines deprioritize it, causing a drop in rankings and reducing your organic traffic.

This is especially true when competitors consistently update and refresh their content, making it more likely that they will outrank you on search results.

Users are less likely to click through when outdated material lingers in lower positions. This results in a steady decrease in visitors to your site and can ultimately harm your SEO performance.

2. Reduced brand authority

Outdated or incorrect information can damage your reputation and make users less likely to trust your content.

If you don’t do a content refresh whenever needed, it can harm the overall quality of your online content.

This is why, understanding and addressing content decay helps ensure your site maintains a competitive edge and continues to rank highly for relevant search queries.

How Does Content Decay Happen?

Now that you better understand why content freshness is important for SEO, let’s get into why content decay happens.

Decay can occur for various reasons, but knowing what causes decay is the first step toward preventing it.

Here are a few reasons why content decay happens and strategies to address and stop content decay:

1. Outdated Information

One of the most common reasons for decaying content is outdated information. If your article contains old statistics, outdated references, or obsolete practices, it’s unlikely to perform well against more current content.

For example, an article about “SEO trends of 2020” would likely become less relevant in 2024.

To address this, make sure that you regularly update old posts with the latest statistics, research, and best practices. This helps you create evergreen, scannable content.

You should also follow Google’s EEAT guidelines to ensure that your content lifecycle is prolonged.

Here’s a quick overview of what it means to create content that complies with the EEAT guidelines:

2. Changes in Search Intent

Search intent is the purpose behind a user’s query.

Over time, search intent can evolve, and what users wanted a year ago may differ from what they want today.

For instance, a query about “best SEO tools” may have shifted from general reviews to specific guides about SEO tools that incorporate the latest industry trends.

To address this, perform regular keyword research to monitor changes in search intent and adjust your content accordingly.

I’d recommend combining SEOBoost’s Topic Reports feature and LowFruits.io to perform search intent-focused keyword research.

Topic Reports analyzes top-ranking content and identifies about 24 specific metrics, giving you insights into keyword performance and user intent.

Meanwhile, LowFruits.io helps you find low-competition and long-tail keywords.

Together, these tools help you spot changes in search trends, ensuring your content stays aligned with evolving user queries and maintains its relevance in search engine results.

3. Competitor Content

Your competitors are always working to create better, more comprehensive content. Your content may lose ground in the rankings if they produce higher-quality or more up-to-date articles.

Perform regular competitor analysis. Look at the top-ranking articles for your target keywords, identify the gaps in your content, and enhance your articles accordingly.

SEOBoost can generate topic reports that analyze your competitors’ content across various metrics.

4. Technological Advancements

With the rapid pace of technological change, content that was once relevant may no longer be. 

For example, AI, machine learning, or web development advancements may render previous methods and strategies obsolete.

To address this, stay current on technological advancements in your industry and update your existing content to reflect the latest tools, techniques, and technologies.

5. Algorithm Updates

Search engine algorithms frequently update to serve user intent better. Major updates like Google’s Panda or Hummingbird algorithms shifted the emphasis toward high-quality, user-focused content, leaving many low-quality or thin pages in the dust.

Stay current with major search algorithm updates and adjust your content accordingly. Ensure your content provides value, meets user expectations, and avoids practices the algorithms penalize.

6. Keyword Cannibalization

Keyword cannibalization happens when multiple pages on your website target the same keyword, causing them to compete against each other in the rankings. This weakens the overall performance of your content and lowers the on page SEO score.

Perform an internal keyword audit to identify and resolve keyword cannibalization. Consolidate similar content or create a more distinct focus for each piece to avoid competition between your own pages.

5 Best Practices for Combating Content Decay

Now that we understand what causes content decay, let’s explore five effective ways to prevent it from negatively impacting your rankings and traffic.

1. Use SEOBoost’s Content Optimization Feature

SEOBoost’s content optimization feature is an invaluable tool for combating content decay. 

SEOBoost is AI-powered; this feature analyzes your existing content and offers suggestions on improving it for better rankings.

It allows you to write, edit, save, and optimize in one place and offers real-time feedback on keyword density, readability, and relevance.

Its AI-powered analysis helps you refine your content by recommending updates based on trends, boosting your Google ranking and making your content more competitive.

2. Run an SEO Content Audit Using SEOBoost

Regular content audits are among the best ways to identify and combat content decay. 

And with SEOBoost’s content audit feature, you can easily analyze your website’s content performance, helping you pinpoint which pages are decaying and need a refresh.

Here’s how you can conduct an audit using SEOBoost:

• Analyze your content library to see which articles are losing traffic.
• Identify outdated content that needs refreshing.
• Optimize content based on the suggestions provided by SEOBoost, such as updating old references or improving internal links.

3. Repurpose and Redistribute Older Content

Repurposing content allows you to breathe new life into old posts by adapting them for different formats and platforms. This not only helps to combat decay but also expands your audience reach.

Here’s how to repurpose content:

• Turn old blog posts into infographics, videos, or podcasts.
• Create an updated version of an older post with new research and publish it as a new article.
• Share repurposed content on social media or in newsletters to engage a different audience.

4. Update Website Content Regularly

Keeping your content up-to-date is one of the most straightforward but effective ways to prevent content decay.

Regularly refreshing your website with the latest information ensures your content stays relevant and competitive.

Here’s how you can update website content:

• Set a schedule to review and update your high-performing content quarterly or bi-annually.
• Add new data, statistics, or research to the older content.
• Revise your headings and subheadings to reflect updated information.

For example, when you update an old blog post about “SEO tips for 2018,” make sure you update it with fresh insights for 2024, including new algorithms, tools, and strategies.

5. Optimize for Internal Linking

A strong internal linking structure boosts your site’s SEO by helping search engines better understand your content’s hierarchy and relevance. 

It also encourages users to explore other pages on your site, reducing bounce rates.

Here’s how you can optimize internal links:

• Identify opportunities for linking to relevant content across your website.
• Use descriptive anchor text that reflects the linked content’s focus.
• Ensure your cornerstone pages have plenty of internal links from relevant articles.

You can also use AIOSEO’s link assistant tool to automate the linking process.

It suggests related content for internal links, helping to improve site structure and SEO performance. 

Additionally, it automates adding or removing links, providing real-time link suggestions while you create content. 

Final Word

Content decay is an inevitable challenge, but by understanding its causes and taking proactive steps to combat it, you can keep your content relevant, maintain rankings, and improve organic traffic.

Remember, regular content audits, keyword research, and optimization using tools like SEOBoost can help ensure your content remains competitive, well-ranked, and valuable to users.

You can also start exploring the full potential of SEOBoost with a free trial today.

FAQs

1. What is content decay in SEO?

Content decay refers to the gradual decline in a web page’s ranking, traffic, and engagement over time as it becomes outdated or irrelevant.

2. How to fix content decay?

To fix content decay, update outdated content, optimize for new keywords, run regular SEO audits using SEO analysis tools, and improve internal linking.

3. What is content coverage in SEO?

Content coverage refers to the breadth and depth of topics covered by your content on a specific subject, making it a valuable resource for users and search engines.

Alina Zahid Content Writer

Alina is an SEO professional with specialized knowledge of content marketing. When she’s not busy researching and creating awesome content for SEOBoost, she can be found practicing piano, writing fiction and traveling.

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Content Marketing SEO Content Strategy