Nowadays, the importance of quality content trumps the quantity of content you may have on your website.
Google considers many factors when determining website rankings on the SERP, and fresh content is one of the most important of these when SEO is concerned. As a digital marketing agency, we understand the importance of this and like to ensure that you do too.
But how do you decide between which content should be updated and which should be removed completely? And why? We’re sharing our thoughts below!
Why Would You Remove Content In The First Place?
The famous saying ‘Content is King’ still rings true to this day. Though the way content is ranked and how it gets traffic has changed over the years. Google’s algorithm has placed importance on some factors while removing the significance of other factors.
However, it is unnecessary to remove content in every case, but we’ll touch on that next. Where content is no longer relevant, attracting new traffic, converting visitors, or having valuable links, it might be worth deleting the content entirely.
You have to ask yourself if the content is valuable and relevant, in addition to how it currently ranks. You’ll be able to do this when completing a content audit, which will help you get a clear idea of what your content strategy should be.
A content audit involves going through all the content you have on your website and determining each’s strengths and weaknesses. This is an excellent way to begin your content refresh or removal as you’ll clearly see what’s working and what’s not. By doing this, you can get a good idea of how you can move forward and create a strategy that will optimize your strengths to ensure a well-performing website.
Removing invaluable pages like these will not disrupt or harm your website; if anything, this will freshen it up and make your website more relevant.
Opting To Improve Old Content Instead
If you have decided to freshen up and improve on existing content, there are a few things you need to make sure of. Once again, you need to check how your current content is performing. Does it still receive page views? Are there strong links? Are visitors converting? Does it offer valuable, quality content to people?
Asking yourself these questions will help you decide whether improving or removing this content is the best way to go.
If your answers to these questions are yes, then giving the content a refresh will be worth it. But what does that entail?
You should be on the lookout for new keywords relevant to your content and what searches are gaining the most traction. Using this information to revive your content will help achieve a high ranking and attract a lot of traffic.
Once you’ve identified the content that can be refreshed, using new keywords for optimization will help older content rank again. In addition to this, using the same URL (if possible) will be beneficial. If you create a new URL, it will be like starting from the beginning again, and you will fall into the trap of competing with your own URLs.
When refreshing content, it is also vital that you not only do the steps above, but you need to ensure that the information is up to date as well and still relevant, naturally. Especially if the content is a few years old, the basic tenets of the information might be accurate, but things change and advance over the years, so the content needs to reflect that.
The Steps To Follow
When you begin your website refresh, there are some steps you can follow that will help you make your decisions appropriately. These can be summed up as:
Complete an audit – Doing a complete audit through the content you have is your starting point. If you are unsure of what you have on your website, deciding what to improve or remove will be extremely challenging. Become familiar with this before you dive in.
Measure analytics – You should look at each piece of content and consider the analytics.
The level of engagement, the traffic, the conversions, and so on. This will give you an idea of what needs a refresh and what needs to go.
Make the changes – You now know what content you have and what draws people to your website. With this information, you can confidently decide where you should focus and what you should get rid of.
Removing and improving your old content will take a little while, but it will be worth it. When Google notices your refreshed content, filled with quality information and strong keywords, your website will be rewarded.
Just remember to be sure about what content goes and what stays; you don’t want to unintentionally decrease your SEO score or lose your page ranking because of removing content that was actually performing well. Doing your audit and following the steps mentioned will help ensure you don’t let this happen!
Ultranet –
For enquiries on any of our expertise or services, whether it is for website design & development, mobile application development, or digital media marketing, please feel free to contact or WhatsApp +6016-2032 000, email [email protected] or visit https://ultranet.com.my Thank you.
