Old Website Content Won’t Cut It: Why And How Updating Your Content Works

A lot of digital marketers want to have reliable content writers and creators on their team. This isn’t just for show. Content is king has a huge part and plays a huge role in ensuring your branding and everything inside it shows your message and vision in exactly the way you want. When we say content, it’s not just articles. It has everything to do with what you show to audiences. These include photos, videos, graphics, website design, and most especially content you post in your website. Of course, when it comes to appearances, you know you’ve got to be presentable – and this is just as more important in website content. In this article, we’ll explain just why you should regularly replace your old website content.

Content: Old Can Be Both Good And Bad

One of the criteria for being the “best” in content releases is to make content that “lasts.” This means you ought to make pieces that can be useful for audiences regardless who views them and when they do it. Theoretically, these are content pieces poised to be “lasting” and “good for SEO” because they are heavily viewed. However, this is a double-edged sword. Consider:

• Timeless content stays in your page for a long time. This can prove that your company may be the “first” to write such content. However, a person from 2019 viewing a piece as old as 2011 can see it as outdated.
• Information changes a lot, and it can show. Even if you write extremely in-depth content, information about niches change over time. Advances get discovered, and new strategies can be developed. Your piece might be at the top of the game regarding flip phones, but what about the age of the smartphone?
• Interests change over time. Even if your pieces and content cater to a specific niche, your customer needs and interests can change. Pieces that don’t reflect the changing times can easily be left behind by both old and new competition.

Content Replacement: Update To Outlast Competition

Content has a lot of categories under it, and all of them have some sort of way to help link customers to helpful and useful information in your site. However, it’s important to remember that content shouldn’t stay in your site forever. In fact, it helps your site “refresh” interest by replacing your content every now and then with updated and more useful information. This isn’t just out of consistency. Rather, this can have some huge effects and advantages on your overall content marketing and presence. Companies like us here in Pnetform Web Development focus on ensuring content in our client’s sites are all curated to meet these criteria of many others. Here’s why and how you should replace old website content with new ones:

Update Can Be Enough: When we think of replacing old content, we immediately think of deleting it. This isn’t necessarily the case. If you approach this right, sometimes an update is really what you need to provide more compelling and modern pieces to meet your needs. Of course, this also means making sure you get to provide information that’s interesting enough to warrant interest.

Why, though? It’s understandably impractical to just delete old pieces of content if they’re getting even a little traffic. The key here is to improve old pieces well enough so they get updated and relevant enough to get more views and traction with your audience.

• Check pages and pieces of content that has a time factor in them. This means these pieces rely on a period of time to attract attention. These can be pieces that reference research and blogs from previous years. Or these can be pieces about tools that can be outdated. These are perfect for updates.
• See if you’re capable of finding new information on the subject. You can check for updated research or blog posts on the subject. You may even check if tools you reference have been updated.
• You can even update the post and simply reshare it to your pages. This can be enough to gain new traction if you target the right people.

Utilize The Power of Multimedia: Don’t hesitate to go full blast in your creative approach to content. When you have old information and pieces you want to update, don’t think of its original medium alone. Think of other formats you could use to expand the content. Can you make it into an infographic? A video? A photo?

Why, though? Some might think search engines can’t sift through pictures and videos to find text that can be linked to SEO. However, relying on multimedia not only saves website space, but it also adds a fresh twist for viewers. Search engines may not see the text you provide actively, but they do notice when people click your content.

• Try to find indicators in your old pieces that can determine the kind of multimedia pieces they can become How-To pieces can become intensive videos, and listicles can be video listicles or picture galleries. The possibilities are endless depending on your chosen niche.
• When you first make these updated pieces of content, link them to your old content first. You can slowly delete the old content if you notice these new pieces gaining enough traction.

Rewrite And Retouch Your Content: Some of you might even think of just removing your old post and replacing it with the same content, just for the sake of updating your piece’s timestamp. In a way, this makes sense. After all, the point here is to update your piece anyway. However, it’s lousy content marketing to just leave your pieces “reuploaded.” It can help to rewrite the piece and reupload it as an “update” of the old one.

Why, though? Updating your timestamp actually matters when it comes to increasing your traction in SEO. If you have a 2011 piece on digital marketing, and a competitor has a 2015 piece on digital marketing, it’s likely you’ll view the 2015 piece if you’re reading it in 2019. Recent works seem more appealing to readers.

• Rewrite your content to fit a more “updated” tone. Use words that are more appropriate in your current niche, and make sure you tailor your content to your audiences today. It’s essentially the same piece but retrofitted for modern standards.
• Don’t hesitate to re-research your data. Even if it’s content from a few years, it can help to refresh your piece on the kind of data it provides. Who knows, you can actually find information enough for a sequel piece?

Establish Continuity With A Sequel: If you’re doubtful about the strength of your content as a “rewritten” upload, you can up the ante in a sequel. After all, if you’ve gathered enough information to actually make a sequel, then readers might find it worth the while to read in the context of today’s times. This greatly helps if you want to generate interest in two pieces of interrelated content.

Why, though? Content with sequels work to “refresh” a search engine’s systems on the existence of your older piece. Not only do you get to link back to an older piece and therefore increase traction, you actually make both your older and newer piece interconnected to each other.

• See if there are any hints in your older content that warrants a separate expansion. What data, concept, quote, or even piece of information can you look into? What things won’t make sense to new readers? Look for these sorts of information.
• Make as many content expansions as you deem fit. You might be surprised at the kind of expansions you can make with your original piece. Find unexplained concepts, beginner concepts that can warrant a 101 or beginner’s guide, or nuanced concepts that can get their own piece.
• Make sure you link back to your old piece with this new article. This establishes a new link that search engines can look into when checking out your SEO. Done right, you can have other websites linking back to you as well!

Don’t Let Old Website Content Overstay Their Welcome

It’s important to remember that website content isn’t always stationary, and it shouldn’t be permanent. While your website content in general should be made timeless, this doesn’t mean it should stay in your site forever. As mentioned, content that is timeless means it can be useful and meaningful regardless when it’s read. That’s why you should consider writing new kinds of content to replace old content, even if they’re pretty much similar to old content you’d delete. This helps not only refresh your website content, but also ensure readers that they’re not reading stale and overdue content. Updated pieces of content appear more useful and reliable to users. Teams like Pnetform Web Development understands this approach to creating and curating content, and our team can help you achieve the kind of depth and care you’re looking for your site and its content.