5 Ways to Revitalize Old Content

Evergreen high-ranking content that continually drives traffic and leads is every marketers dream but eventually that content starts to get old, loses relevance and may even stop generating visits altogether.

Our guide below provides starting points for how to revitalize old content and if you need a full content audit and strategy then contact AVX Digital today.

Content Tip 1: Update for 2022

Most evergreen content, especially longer form guides and how-to articles will have a shelf life of at least 18-24 months but beyond that, even with quality backlinks, it will begin to suffer as other, newer pieces are written on the subject.

One quick way to revitalize content is to update it for the current year. Start by looking at technologies, assumptions, hypotheses, behaviors that were the norm when the article was written and compare it to what we know today. Platforms, preferences and products are constantly evolving and updating a high-performing piece to cover new trends both in content and tagging and can help restart traffic.

Content Tip 2: Add New Media

One thing we constantly see with high performing content is that it stays solely as a written piece even when visit data shows that a companion video or images/infographic could be helpful.

Adding media can not only attract more links but provide new ways of content discovery through image and video search while taking up additional space in SERPs and helping to drive higher organic clickthrough rates.

Media can also be posted on social platforms allowing for interest to be reignited among your community.

Content Tip 3: Expand Your Thoughts

Many long-form content pieces suffer from the same pattern. The first 75% of the article is a well-researched, linked and supported content piece while the final fourth can seem rushed with summaries instead of expanded content.

Often this can be the result of a time constraint or if the article was hired out to a content specialist, length/word count costs. Take a fine tooth comb to your evergreen content and look for areas where you glossed over an important point or didn’t expand on a critical thought and find ways to layer in more data and analysis.

Content Tip 4: Internal Linking

Articles published a year or two years ago on sites that constantly produce content suffer from the same issue: over time they get lost in a site’s architecture.

When published, a piece will be on page 1 for the blog as well as the first page of its category and tag. (While many sites don’t index tag and category pages, it can be a helpful tool for crawl discovery) Over time as articles are published it is now an extra 1-4 clicks further down the hierarchy and each layer a crawler has to go to find a piece of content, the less weight it gives.

One solution could be building a permanent page or pinned post that serves as a directory of your “best of” content. Making sure users and search engines can quickly find your content in 1-2 levels can help recover traffic, relevance and make sure your brand’s best work is constantly within site of your audience.

Content Tip 5: Create a Section for it

Often when we look at client’s blogs, one or two entries will have the lion’s share of traffic and we often recommend taking those entries and using them as a springboard to develop a robust content presence.

A post that explains how to do something is great but are there opportunities to answer who/what/when/where/why in ways that are accretive to overall value and provide additional traffic opportunities?

Often a successful piece of content is the tip of the iceberg for what can be an even greater content section.

For instance this piece fits into a larger content discussion including:

How to make your content more engaging

Content marketing for the holidays

Your Best Content

Every site has a post that really captures attention and traffic and as long as you maintain and update it, it can continue to perform for years to come. For more information on how AVX content marketing services can help your brand, contact us today.