Once you’ve mastered content optimization and SEO to make organic content rank on Google or other search engine results pages, it usually seems like you’ve reached the finish line. And there appears to be no need to update website content.
However, the competition doesn’t end here.
Outdated information harms user experience and search engine visibility, ultimately impacting your online presence.
One way to ensure your content is always valuable is to update website content. And this comprehensive guide focuses on the importance of refreshing website content.
So, let’s begin by understanding why you should update website content regularly.
Why You Should Update Website Content
Maintaining a website that consistently delivers up-to-date, valuable information is crucial for the proper functionality of your business.
Updating your web design and content regularly maintains a high-end user experience by providing accurate, current content that meets industry trends and user expectations. This, in turn, boosts SEO since search engines favor fresh, relevant content, which can improve your rankings and drive more organic traffic.
Regularly publishing updated content also establishes your authority in the industry, making your brand a trusted source of knowledge. It also helps you maintain a competitive edge when everyone is out there to snatch your ranks, ensuring you don’t fall behind competitors who refresh their content.
The most important thing to know when you update website content is to automate the whole process. As your brand grows, you can not manually check and edit every published content.
This is where tools like SEOBoost allow you to perform a complete content audit and revamp ideas from your previously saved campaigns to create a better, more recent version for your website update.
Considering these reasons for updating website content, let’s explore the best practices for updating website content in 2024.
6 Best Practices on How to Update Website Content
Here are 6 best practices on how to update website content that is part of my own strategy:
1. Identify the content that requires an update
The first step in the content update process is identifying which pages or sections of your website need attention. This can be achieved through various methods, including:
- Analyze your website’s traffic and engagement metrics to pinpoint underperforming pages or those with high bounce rates, indicating a need for content improvement.
- Review your competitors’ websites regularly to assess how their content compares to yours regarding relevance, depth, and quality. If their content outshines yours, it may be time for an update.
- Conduct thorough content audits to evaluate your content’s accuracy, relevance, and performance. This process can reveal outdated information, broken links, or content that no longer aligns with your brand’s messaging or target audience.
- Actively seek feedback from your website visitors, customers, or social media followers. Their insights can help identify areas your content may lack or fail to meet their needs, guiding your update priorities.
By identifying the content that requires attention, you can strategically refine your resources and focus your efforts on the areas that will bring the most significant impact.
To get started with website analysis, use the AIOSEO search statistics feature. As a plugin for your website, the platform automatically tracks your website’s SEO metrics for every page.
You can track and combat content decay by identifying which content is losing traction, audience interest, or Google rankings.
Once you have identified the pages or sections that require updates, you can use the Content Audit feature of SEOBoost to pinpoint all issues within the content and optimize for better performance.
With the Content Audit feature, you can:
- Evaluate the overall quality of your content, including factors such as readability, keyword optimization, and adherence to best practices.
- Look for opportunities to enhance content, such as adding multimedia elements, internal linking, or incorporating additional relevant keywords.
- Monitor your content optimization efforts over time, ensuring that your updates yield the desired results and make the necessary adjustments.
2. Run a keyword report using Topic Reports
Keyword research is crucial when creating content, but trends change, and so does your ranking based on them. By understanding the latest search trends and user intent, you can tailor your content to better align with your target audience’s needs and interests.
Utilize SEOBoost’s Topic Reports, gaining a list of keywords and topics most relevant to your industry and their metrics. The tool analyzes search data, competitor content, and user behavior to provide you with a comprehensive report on the most effective keywords and topics to target. It is especially great for a small business to identify the right keywords to rank.
With Topic Reports, you can:
- Target keywords with high search volumes and low competition, presenting improved visibility and traffic opportunities.
- Analyze the context and intent behind specific keyword searches, allowing you to create content that directly addresses your audience’s needs.
- Stay up-to-date with the latest keyword trends and shifts in user behavior, ensuring that your content remains relevant and aligned with current search patterns. Once you have new keywords, you can get an audience from untapped queries while informing the search engine that you’re keeping up with changes so it doesn’t demote your webpage from the SERP rankings.
3. Use Content Optimization feature to re-optimize and update website content
Once you have identified the necessary updates and incorporated relevant keywords, it’s time to optimize your content for maximum impact. Here, optimization goes beyond finding new trends or keywords and improving your content’s overall quality and appeal (again).
SEOBoost’s Content Optimization feature provides suggestions and metrics to ensure your updated content adheres to best practices and resonates with your target audience.
This is what a work in progress looks like:
With the Content Optimization feature, you can:
- Improve your content’s overall readability and flow to ensure that it is easy to comprehend and engaging for your readers.
- Implement SEO best practices, such as strategic keyword placement, meta tag optimization, and internal linking, to boost your search engine visibility.
- Integrate relevant images, videos, and multimedia elements to enhance your content’s visual appeal and engagement.
While you make these edits, you can also track your progress through a score indicator. You can keep ruling your top positions as long as everything is in the green zone.
Pro tip: However, don’t simply rely on metrics to determine the quality of your content update. If you have new information, opinions, or strategies to add to your content, always go ahead and add them to your existing pages. Google values authenticity and unique content more than anything!
4. Update links and metadata
In addition to optimizing the old content, it is crucial to update the associated links and metadata in the fresh content.
Remember, broken links, outdated meta descriptions, and inaccurate titles can negatively impact your website’s usability and search engine rankings.
Use AIOSEO’s link assistant to optimize your links and look for opportunities. You can check the health of your internal and external links, find out if any broken links or orphaned posts can benefit from more links, and verify what kind of domains are linking back to you.
To address this better, follow these best practices:
- Regularly scan your website for broken internal and external links, and promptly update or remove them to maintain a smooth user experience.
- Write compelling and strategic meta descriptions and titles that accurately reflect the updated content. You can improve them using SEOBoost’s AI suggestions!
- Review and update your internal linking structure to ensure that relevant pages are appropriately cross-linked, improving navigation and distributing link equity throughout your website.
Maintaining accurate and up-to-date links and metadata enhances the user experience and improves your website’s visibility and credibility in search engine results.
5. Update the multimedia content
It’s a given now that adding multimedia elements to your website content is essential for capturing and retaining user attention.
However, like content, outdated or irrelevant images, videos, and infographics can detract from your content updates’ overall quality and impact.
To ensure your multimedia content remains fresh and engaging, consider the following best practices:
- Review and replace outdated or irrelevant images, videos, or infographics regularly with more high-quality images.
- Ensure your multimedia quality content is optimized for various devices, including desktops, tablets, and smartphones, to provide a consistent and seamless platform experience.
- Encourage and incorporate user-generated content, such as customer testimonials, product reviews, or social media posts, to add authenticity and relevance to your updated content.
- Prioritize accessibility by providing alternative text descriptions for images and closed captions for videos, ensuring that your multimedia content is inclusive and accessible to all users.
Like content, storing brand elements and graphics and being ready for team collaboration is challenging. SEOBoost also works as a content management system to help you store your briefs, several content versions, and a vault of creative assets.
With the multimedia planner, you can keep a folder for your brand visuals and access unlimited stock images on the Internet, making it easier for your team to add better images and optimize visuals faster.
6. Publish the updated content to the existing page
As the final step, after updating your content, all that’s left is to publish it on the existing page rather than create a new one. This maintains the SEO value and authority of the original URL.
Notify search engines of the changes by updating your XML sitemap and using tools like Google Analytics to track and Google Search Console to request indexing. This ensures that the updated content is quickly recognized and indexed by search engines, helping to maintain or improve your rankings.
While the updated versions are usually the ones that the audience and search engine naturally come around to, you can promote the updated content through your social media channels, email newsletters, and other marketing channels to drive traffic and engagement and let your audience spread the word if you’ve made any major edits.
For example, AIOSEO updates its most popular evergreen content piece on SEO Statistics every year and mentions that in its updated date.
Getting Started with SEOBoost to Update Website Content
Like I said before, what matters in optimization is how fast you can act and automate your processes. That’s why finding the perfect tool to complement your strategy is more important than ever.
Updating different types of content with SEOBoost can be an easy process that can significantly enhance your site’s performance.
Here’s how to utilize SEOBoost’s features to keep your content fresh, relevant, and engaging.
1. Content Audit
SEOBoost provides a score on your existing content and campaigns, offering AI-driven evaluations of what’s working and what’s not after analyzing thousands of sources online to make strategic edits.
This helps you focus on changes that bring the most value, ensuring your content is always up to date-and aligned with best practices.
2. Content Briefs
Generate new content briefs on the same topic to see if your existing articles follow the latest trends. By comparing these briefs, you can add new headings and sections to your current content, ensuring it remains comprehensive and relevant.
3. Content Optimization
SEOBoost’s content optimization feature helps you fine-tune your content with a keyword density score to improve rankings. You can adjust readability scores, add internal and external links, improve metadata and headings, and enhance the overall user experience of your content.
4. Topic Reports
Stay ahead of the curve with SEOBoost’s topic reports.
Fetch a list of new LSI keywords, secondary keywords, main keyword variations, search terms, and unique queries based on the latest trends. This ensures your content remains competitive and visible in search results.
5. Content Management
Centralize your content creation, optimization, and update process with SEOBoost’s content management tools.
You can store all your campaigns in a consolidated platform, schedule new content and updates, create multimedia storage, and collaborate efficiently with your team.
This automation saves you time and ensures consistency across all your content marketing and digital marketing efforts.
FAQs
How can I improve and update website content?
Improving your website content involves a combination of strategies, including conducting thorough keyword research, optimizing for search engines and user experience, incorporating multimedia elements, and regularly updating and refreshing your content to ensure it remains relevant and engaging.
Why update website content?
Updating your website content is crucial for several reasons, including enhancing user experience, boosting search engine optimization (SEO), establishing industry authority, maintaining a competitive advantage, and reinforcing brand credibility. Regular content updates demonstrate your commitment to providing accurate, up-to-date information and fostering a positive online presence.
What is a good website content?
Good website content is engaging, informative, and tailored to your target audience’s needs and interests. It should be well-written, visually appealing, and optimized for search engines while adhering to best practices for readability, accessibility, and user experience. Good website content should also be regularly updated to ensure its relevance and accuracy.
