A content decay and refresh strategy that maintains website relevance contributes to improving organic traffic from search engines

Implement these proven content decay strategies to revitalise old content, improve search engine rankings and drive more conversions.

Many people focus solely on creating new on-site content for their clients, often ignoring older posts and pages. This is especially common in blogging at a time when the trend is to prioritise quantity over quality.

This always reminds me of the ‘pull up and sell’ strategy in the stock market – short-term thinking that sometimes leads to wins and sometimes leads to big losses.

I know this approach is flawed and ultimately leads to what I call the ‘content recession’. When I launched my agency in 2017, I focused on updating old content as well as creating new content.

The results were immediately impressive – and continue to be impressive.

For example, earlier this year, one of our commercial pest control clients published an underperforming blog post created by a previous agency. The content was good, but lacked many on-page SEO elements, particularly title tags and internal links (two of which were effectively dead!) .

We updated the internal links and all other on-page SEO elements and rewrote about 30% of the content. The blog post jumped to the top position for the target keyword in the target position within six weeks.

Amplifying it on social media naturally attracted other shares, quality links, and Google business profiles, and we were able to attribute nearly $100,000 in new revenue to the content.

This experience convinced me that content decay is a serious issue for many businesses and needs to be addressed as soon as possible. It also inspired me to restructure our service offerings to make content renewal a core service for our clients.

What is content decay?

Content decay occurs when traffic to a web page declines over time. This can be caused by several factors.

Search engine algorithms are constantly being updated and what worked a year ago may no longer work today.

New competitors continue to emerge, creating newer content that may be more in line with current audience preferences. In addition, your content may become stale.

With the rise of AI-generated content, this problem has become even more acute. Many brands use AI to produce as much content as possible, but don’t have a content strategy in place to keep it fresh and relevant.

With the right content decay strategy, you can combat content decay and ensure that your content remains relevant long after you hit ‘publish’.

Recognising the signs of content decay

Firstly, you need to be able to recognise content decay before you can fix it.

Pay attention to your engagement metrics and watch for these signs of content decline:

• Less natural traffic to the page/post.
• Lower overall search engine rankings.
• Outdated information.
• High bounce rate.
• Low average time on page.
• Low social shares.
• Negative user feedback.
• Content Decay Strategies to Revitalise Your Content

So how do you combat content decay and improve user experience? Here are some content decay strategies to revitalise your content and keep it performing well.

Conduct regular content audits

Regular content audits can help you identify pages that are underperforming or in need of updating.

Tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Semrush and Ahrefs track page performance and identify content that could benefit from a refresh.

This will improve your content marketing strategy and enhance your online presence. When conducting a content audit, I recommend focusing on the following key metrics:

• Organic traffic.
• Bounce rate.
• Conversion rates.
• Time on page.
• Update and refresh your existing content

Remember, you don’t just need to create new content. Sometimes, refreshing old content can be a better use of your time and resources. When combined with new content on an ongoing basis, you can maximise potential results.

If your content is performing well but needs some tweaking, simply update it slightly and republish it with a new date. Content updates don’t have to be a daunting task.

Focus on making a few key changes that will have a big impact

A content update can be as simple as adding a few sentences, or as complex as rewriting an entire section or refreshing internal links that point to better performing pages (and making sure those better performing pages point back too!) .

Whichever method you use, be sure to let Google and other search engines know that you’ve updated your content.

This will help them crawl and index your content faster. Here are some specific content update ideas that reinforce why it’s important for you or your organisation to be aware of all the latest content – something I argue every week because the industry is changing so quickly today.

Update outdated statistics

Add new information based on the latest research and developments in your field.
Remove redundancies and use shorter sentences and paragraphs to improve readability and open up the ‘mental space’ for readers to digest more easily.
Add more visuals to your content, such as images, videos and infographics. Regarding video, we’re constantly trying to get company leaders to create a short video that discusses the focus of a blog or service page. The goal is to upload it to YouTube and link back to the article, then embed the video in the actual article itself. This helps in many ways, keeping people engaged and helping them become brand loyalists quickly.
Make sure your content is optimised for current SEO best practices. This includes using relevant keywords throughout your content and making sure your site is mobile-friendly.
Check and fix broken links. Broken links can frustrate users and hurt your search engine rankings.
Make sure your content is still relevant to your target audience. Your target audience may change over time and your content needs to reflect this.

Repurpose outdated content

Instead of letting old content gather dust in your archives, give them new life by retooling them into other formats. This is a great content strategy to get more out of your existing content.

For example, you can turn blog posts into videos, infographics, and even podcast clips.

When you repurpose content, you can make the most of your existing content while still reaching a wider audience. Repurposing content is an effective way to breathe new life into your content and appeal to a wider audience.

Content Formatting Repurposing Ideas

Blog posts Create infographics, videos or social media posts based on this information. Turn them into downloadable lists, templates or worksheets.
Infographics Break it down into smaller, personal social media visuals. Elaborate on each point in a series of blog posts or email newsletters.
Video Transcribe video into blog posts or create short, shareable clips for social media. Extract audio and create podcast episodes.
Podcast Episode Transcribe the clip and turn it into a blog post or create a short, shareable audiogram for social media. Extract key quotes and create social media graphics.

Sunset content that has passed its peak

It’s a good rule of thumb to keep high-performance content for as long as possible. However, not all content is worth saving. Content deprecation is the practice of removing outdated or irrelevant content from a website.

Not all content needs to be updated. If you have content that is actually incorrect or no longer relevant to your target audience, it’s usually best to remove it altogether.

However, you may also choose to redirect that URL to a more relevant page on your site instead of removing it altogether.

Utilise user feedback

User feedback is invaluable in identifying content decline.

You can gain valuable insights by using tools like Google Analytics and Search Console, but don’t limit yourself to that. Use reviews and social media to your advantage as well.

See what people are saying (or not saying) about your content. What resonated with them? What’s falling flat? This feedback is like gold when it comes to determining what content to update and refresh.

Consider sending out surveys to your audience asking them what topics they’d like to see or what content they found most helpful.

Create a Content Audit Plan

The best way to get a handle on your content update efforts is to create a content audit plan and stick to it. Life gets busy and a schedule will ensure that your content stays relevant and engaging and doesn’t get lost in the chaos.

For example, you can check all of your website content quarterly and flag anything that needs updating. This ensures that you never let content become stale.

My organisation monitors individual pages/posts on a weekly basis. Depending on the size of the site, which ranges from 25 new pieces of content per month to 3 per month, we overhaul old content on different timelines.

For example, for a large website campaign client with over 200 pages/posts, we overhaul them once a month, say around 5 times. For smaller sites, pages/posts will be overhauled quarterly.

Review your content regularly and make it a priority
Content decay is a real problem for websites of all sizes.

By implementing these content decay strategies, you can breathe new life into old content. You will make it more relevant to your audience.

Not only that, but you’ll improve your search engine rankings and increase traffic to your website. Review your content regularly and prioritise keeping it fresh, up-to-date and engaging.