Onefoursix have put together need-to-know tips to help improve your ranking on Google with minimal work. Instead of writing and creating lots of new content, we are going to tell you how you can update old blogs to achieve the same results. Less work and faster results. 

Updating old content will give you an improved freshness score. What we mean by this is that when you tell Google your content is new, you will gain a fresh spike in traffic that will make this small amount of work worth your time.

#1 Remove & replace links

Firstly, you want to remove any broken links. This may include links that have expired and therefore do not exist anymore, or simply the URL may have changed. This will hurt your Google ranking as it will push you further down on the results page. It is better to have no links than a broken link.

However, removing broken links doesn’t necessarily mean you have to get rid of the link all together. If there is a fresh and relevant link you can replace the broken link with, go for it! This will improve your blog’s SEO and help boost your Google ranking.

Replacing your links may make your content more up-to-date as you’re linking to newer and better resources. Therefore, this will add a lot more value to your blogs. Link to the best content on the internet and Google will take notice. You want your page to become a go-to hub of information for others.

You should also consider linking to your own resources as this will only lead your audience through to view more of your content. This could be a recent article you’ve published, or just something you’ve written on a relevant topic. 

#2 Update outdated information

You want to show Google that your content is fresh. This is what Google loves. The most recent content will rank higher, especially for topics that change frequently. Therefore, an easy way to double traffic onto your page is to revive your old content with updated information. 

Start by creating a new publication date so when Google crawls your site again, you’ll see a boost in your search engine traffic. Simple! Updating your blog content will also make it more useable and helpful for your readers. This is because it makes the blog more accurate and generally more valuable. 

You should also consider using this time to proof-read your blogs. Fix any grammar and spelling mistakes as ignoring these will have a negative impact on the user experience. This will then be noticeable in your rankings.

#3 Improve your click-through rate (CTR)

When you do a Google search, you will notice that the top results are usually published in the past year. This is because content can become inaccurate in just a few months, and so no one wants to be reading content from three years ago. Therefore, updating your publication date, as previously mentioned, will increase your click-through rate. 

Another consideration to improve your CTR is to update your headline and description to something more compelling that will grab your reader’s attention. This helps you maintain a strong position in Google’s results. A little tip is that a blog title should give your readers an idea of what you will cover without giving too much away. 

#4 Review your keywords 

We always advise reviewing your keywords as there is always a chance you can do more keyword research to help boost your ranking. Or the blog is running better in keywords you least expected. Whatever the situation, optimising your keywords will be beneficial for the presence of your blog.

In order to do this, you may need to consider changing your keyword focus based on four points; the current keywords your site ranks for, the estimated monthly search volume of each current keyword, your website’s current Google ranking for your keyword focus and the estimated competition in your organic search. Using this information, you can decide how to best update your old content to rank higher.

#5 Include multimedia

Adding in different types of media is our final tip to help improve your search engine ranking. Online content is becoming more and more diverse, Google particularly loves content that includes different types of images, audio and video. Blogs with more images and multimedia attracts more backlinks which will have noticeable SEO benefits. Be sure to include alt text or links for all your images and videos, and try to avoid any that have a watermark or logo. 

We recommend using an image for every 350 words. It may be useful to have some illustrative images depending on your blog topic. Using illustrations can make information more appealing to read, and therefore improves the user experience. Including multimedia will generally make your blogs more engaging and improve its Google ranking. 

If you do all this, you’re bound to bring your blog posts back to life! All you need to do now is share your updated blog and promote it all over again.

For any advice with your marketing, get in touch with our onefoursix team.