How many times have you looked at your website and thought: “I need to write more content, no one is finding me”. You’ve spent countless hours brainstorming ideas, writing outlines, fleshing out blog posts, and posting them to your website only to repeat the same thing month after month.
What if I told you: You don’t need new content.
Yep, I said it. If you have an established blog, tweaking your existing content can have a major impact on your rankings and visibility online. It’s a fast and easy way to improve optimization without having to write new articles from scratch or come up with new blog posts all the time.
Leverage your existing content
Your existing content has already built equity, weight, and value with search engines. Use that as your foundation to build upon and make your content even better. Rather than creating entirely new content all the time, try tweaking existing content to improve your rankings.
Your expertise has grown — your content should too
Every day we’re learning, growing, and evolving, and that means your knowledge and expertise are also expanding. What you wrote about a year ago likely doesn’t encompass everything you know about that same topic today.
By revisiting your older content and updating it with your new knowledge, experience, and stories, you can improve the performance of your content and see time on site increase, rankings advance, and conversions improve.
Your time is valuable
On average, people spend 3.5 hours writing blog posts (OptinMonster), but for some business owners, it can take several days or longer depending on how busy they are. Your time can be better spent updating and expanding on the content that you’ve already written.
Same results, less time
Did you know that by updating existing content, you can achieve the same results as if you wrote new content from scratch – but in a fraction of the time?
If you’re like most business owners, you focus all of your efforts on writing new content.
You write it, share it once or twice on social media, and move on and forget about it. And because your content isn’t producing the results you hoped for, you’re constantly feeling the pressure of making that next post THE one — the one that brings in all the leads and gets all the social shares.
This is exhausting and it’s why so many business owners give up on blogging altogether.
When you optimize what you already have, you’re building on the value that piece of content has already accumulated.
I know that feeling because I’ve been there too. I’ve written new posts just for the sake of posting, hoping to get something out there so my clients notice me, and build their trust in me. It wasn’t until I looked at my actual data that I realized I already had great blog posts on my site, they just needed a little more love and attention.
By taking the time to update those posts, I saw an increase in traffic coming to those pages and I spent less time staring at a blank document. It’s way easier to edit content that already exists rather than starting from scratch all the time.
You have a goldmine of content sitting on your site
If you already have a foundation of blog posts on your website, do an audit of your content and determine what can be updated or expanded upon. You’ll be surprised at the value you can create by just giving a little attention to your existing content.
Review the content and ask yourself:
- Are there several similar posts on the same topic?
- Does it reflect my current level of expertise?
- Is it easy to read?
- Can I expand on the content that’s already there?
- Does it contain links going to/from other content on my site?
Let’s look into these questions in more detail.
Do I have several similar posts on the same topic?
Take a look at all the content you have under a topic or category on your blog. You may find that some of the topics on your blog are similar. This is a great opportunity to combine these posts into one longer, more comprehensive article and create more value for your readers.
Search engines will like it better and so will your readers who won’t have to sift through numerous posts on the same subject trying to find the answers they seek.
Does it reflect my current expertise?
Over the past year, you’ve likely attended webinars, conferences, and workshops, and read blog posts and articles, and maybe even done research to expand your expertise and skills. It’s also likely that there have been changes or advancements in your industry that you can share with prospective clients and customers.
All of that knowledge has value to your readers — so share it by updating your existing content with new insights and information. This also gives you the opportunity to make sure the content on your site reflects your current services, products, and programs.
Is the content easy to read?
Review your blog post on the screen and look at the content as if you had never read it before. Are there headings, bullets, quotes, and shorter paragraphs to help make the content easier to skim and digest or is it a big block of text staring back at you?
Are you using industry jargon that only others in the industry would know, or are you writing in a way that someone who is new to the topic can understand?
Can I expand on this content?
Read over the content and see where you can add in more supporting information to boost credibility. Think about adding in examples, screenshots, research, facts, stats, quotes, etc.
Expand your paragraphs, add more sections, or a conclusion that wraps up the topic. This can help to add more value to your readers and keep them on your site longer.
Can I create links to/from this content?
Links to other content on your site is called Internal Linking and it’s something that a lot of people ignore, even though it’s incredibly beneficial.
It’s a great way to demonstrate expertise by creating pathways between related content on your website, allowing users to continue reading on related topics. Not only that, but it also helps search engines understand what your website is about and promotes higher rankings in the process.
Are you linking internally between posts and other pages on your website to or from this piece of content?
Bonus Tip – Review the keywords you rank for currently
You can use Google Search Console (GSC) to understand how people are finding your site, what keywords they’re using to do so, and the pages that show up in search engine results.
Look at Performance > Pages in GSC to find the blog post that you want to review. Skim through the queries for that page, paying attention to the Position of each keyword. If you see a relevant keyword that’s in position 30-50 (pages 3-5), see if you can add more content to the post around that keyword to help bump it up in the search rankings. Even if the content is further down, you can get it trending upward by editing your content and adding more details around that keyword.
New content isn’t always the answer to getting more traffic to your site
You do not need to spend hours brainstorming, researching, writing, editing, optimizing, and publishing brand new content on your website each and every time. It’s exhausting! Take advantage of the equity your existing content already has, give it a refresh to boost visibility, and save yourself some time.
Repeat after me: “I do not need new content. “
Now, take some time to look at your content and pick one blog post to optimize to get you started.
If you would like a fresh set of eyes on your content, we should talk.
