If your website is not evolving and changing with the times then it’s simply a liability. Basically, it’s doing your business no good. In fact, it could be hurting your business. The second you stop refining, re-tuning and tweaking your website is the time it stops loosing it’s competitiveness. The only inevitable outcome is a slow and steady decline in the search engine rankings. Ouch, this is going to hurt.
Your website copy is no different. Old blogs, articles and web pages that have been left lying dormant for years without the slightest copy change will not only be putting clients off but will also be hampering your websites overall web score and in turn rankings. You have to ditch old copy and replace it with new and engaging content. So following are 5 quick and simple ways that you can clean out the dusty old cupboard of your website and replace it with shiny new exciting copy that resonates with your audience. I know your thinking that all of this sounds too hard. After all you went to all the trouble to write the content years ago now you have to replace it all again. What a nightmare. Well, this is the internet and we can’t do anything about it except suck it up and do what we have to do. So start tapping on those keyboards and get cracking.
Related article: Don’t worry about SEO just create good content – That’s wrong!
# 1. Optimise your website content. Make sure that your web page is optimised correctly for your main keywords. Look at the titles and descriptions to make sure they are still relevant. Perhaps you have forgotten about a special you have on last year and it’s still on the site. Things like this can really bring a web page down so you need to keep the keywords updated. This is all ‘on page’ web stuff but it will keep the page fresh.
Say for example you’re a plumber is Sydney and you have a page on your site all about hot water systems. Perhaps it’s time to revisit this page and add some new copy about your latest energy saving hot water system. You only need to add a few paragraphs and this will have a dramatic impact.
# 2. Add some links. Let’s say you have written a blog 4 years ago and your really proud of it. Unfortunately this copy will get buried in the rankings as more newer fresh content gets published over time. You will notice that traffic numbers will drop over time to this blog as less people are able to find it, however good a read it is. A cool little trick is to write a new blog that is somehow related to the old one and put a link on it directing viewers to the old blog. This will not only let Google know that there is a ranking signal to this old blog but it will also direct people back there. If it’s as good as you say it is then people will link to this article and this should re-energise it in the search results. I will often write a blog and have an internal link pointing to something I wrote 6 or even 7 years ago.
# 3. Redirect it. In some cases a blog or page is so old that it has to be deleted. In fact it’s just plain embarrassing. Before you hit the delete button think about the traffic going to that particular page and the keywords it’s ranking for. To be on the safe side what you need to do is perform what’s called a 301 and this will redirect people from the old page to a more relevant new page. This is the safest option. Never delete, always 301. This is standard web practise.
# 4. Do 1 page per week. If the task sounds too large I suggest do this in small steps at 1 per week. Don’t look at the whole picture rather take 1 blog or page at a time and spend say 20-30 minutes on it. Once you get the hang of it you will find that some pages only need a couple of words updates. It may be easier than you think.
# 5. Ditch it. Some articles are just so old they need a complete overhaul. Like some bad clothes you have from the 80’s or 90’s they just need to be thrown out. What was fashionable in content back in 2010 for some industries (especially ours in the digital space) are definitely no longer relevant. I say get in there with a jack hammer and start again.
The advantage of reviving new copy is that you really don’t have to think of new topics to write about. Finding new blog topics can be really hard work (the more you write the more they all seem to sound the same and you end up becoming very repetitive). They are already there and have worked well for you in the past so why not just revive it with a bit of TLC and save yourself a lot of time at the computer.
