The old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” does not apply to content marketing. The online world moves fast. As more information is readily available with the click of a mouse, your content must stay fresh. Internet users are much more savvy and quick to notice outdated information, so you need to be constantly evolving.
The good news is, that refreshing your content can benefit your company without adding too much extra work. Since you’re working with the bones of content you already have, updating your marketing material requires less time and money than creating brand-new pieces.
Not that updating your website, blog posts, external links, and other content will be a cakewalk, exactly. You may even be wondering about the best places to start. This article will help simplify the process by highlighting key areas where you should begin.
1. Your About Page
The About Us page is one of the most visited pages on any business website. Customers are increasingly discerning about the businesses they frequent; they want to see the people behind a company and the values they represent. Crafting an attractive About Us page and keeping it up-to-date is therefore vital.
A successful About Us page focuses on how your brand can offer a unique experience for your customers. Use the page to tell your company’s story and why you do what you do. Adding friendly headshots or candid photos of your staff can help personalize your business. While you’re updating your About Us page, don’t neglect to refresh other essential pages like your contact and product information pages.
2. Your Content Pillars
Your content pillars are long-form, SEO-optimized pieces that cover the topics you want your business to be known for. For example, a dermatologist’s office might have pages on acne, skin cancer, and anti-aging treatments, among other subjects. To do their job as intended, pillars should be updated regularly to attract your target customers and address their current needs. They must also align with your company’s goals.
Content pillars are supported by more specific blog posts that link back to them. Such posts will include the longer-tail keywords your audience is searching for. In the dermatologist scenario, a potential patient might want to know “What is the best treatment for adult acne?” By answering audience questions in your blog posts, you successfully satisfy your prospects’ search intent. By pointing back to your refreshed content pillars, you create a web of interconnected, current content that establishes your authority on Google.
3. Inaccurate Content and Broken or Outdated Links
When you’re refreshing content, you’ll want to eradicate any spelling and grammar errors, which will reduce your company’s credibility. If a dermatologist misspells “tretinoin,” for example, she won’t look like much of an expert. Still, it’s easy to miss such errors during initial creation and posting. Taking a few minutes to correct them is time well spent.
During this step, you should also fact-check any stats and research findings to ensure they are still accurate. Updating stats is a quick way to show Google your content is fresh. This is also an ideal opportunity to double-check any links to other articles or outside sources to ensure they still work. Broken and outdated links can affect your content’s ranking on Google, so simple updates like these make a big difference.
4. Tone Discrepancies
Content that sounds more human and less “perfect” reads as more approachable and can help increase retention. While you should avoid outright spelling and grammar mistakes, breaking a few rules can make your writing feel more approachable. The occasional sentence fragment will sound punchy, and the “rule” about never ending a sentence with a preposition is a superstition, anyhow.
That said, the tone of your content should match your audience. If your tone is too formal, you risk alienating some readers. If your style is too casual, your material could appear unprofessional. Our hypothetical dermatologist shouldn’t promise to zap her patients’ zits, but she should likewise avoid language straight out of a medical study. Your pages will rank better if they’re written well and in a tone that suits your audience.
5. On-Page SEO
Refreshing the material on your website is the perfect time to update SEO keywords and phrases. New data, current events, social trends, and other factors can affect people’s search. For instance, a new anti-aging study could spark fresh interest in retinoids, and the dermatologist would want to refresh her site’s content pillars accordingly. Keeping current on keyword trends in your industry is a simple way to drive traffic to your website.
Another reason you should stay on top of SEO is that Google regularly updates its algorithms. New algorithms may require corresponding modifications to your onsite content to ensure it still ranks. In addition, changes to your product, competitors, or site might necessitate changes. Don’t forget tags, metadata, and site descriptions when updating keywords and phrases.
Stay Organized and Have a Plan
The process of updating your content marketing is pretty straightforward. Once you know what to do, you just need a timeline. Creating a plan can make the process go more smoothly. You’ll want to identify content that needs to be changed, prioritize the pieces, and then promote the refreshed content.
Updating content should be a regular part of your marketing strategy. Fortunately, you can automate some processes, including finding broken links, to streamline your workload. But even where manual effort is required, you’ll find the SEO value of up-to-date content well worth it.
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