Digital marketers often hear about creating high quality SEO content. When brainstorming ideas, digital marketers should keep a few things in mind, like creating well-written and shareable content that serves a purpose. Ultimately, digital marketers want to create high quality content that is Informative and engaging to the consumer. The content should serve a purpose and lead to user engagement.
In today’s business world, writing about a subject once will not cut it if the goal is to have the website rank high through the Google Algorithm. Subsequently, marketers should routinely revisit and update all website content for quality, errors, and relevance of information. Often marketers have to go back to edit old posts or blogs to ensure that the information they provide is accurate and relevant to today’s consumer’s needs. In addition, Google crawlers are constantly looking for relevant information.
However, suppose the information published on a website is not up-to-date. Outdated content could affect the overall ranking of that website and the ability to be found by potential customers.
Fresh High Quality Content for the People
Over time, even the most relevant content can lose its luster. Yoast gives a perfect example of why updating information is essential with the basic concept of an article written on Search Engine Optimization advice (SEO). Since the inception of SEO, its fundamentals have remained the same. Still, over time certain parts of it have updated to reflect modern needs and platforms. This is why high quality content is crucial and should be often looked at and optimized.
Google recently updated how it analyzes and identifies content with a “people first approach.” As a result, companies must create relevant content for the people rather than to please search engine algorithms. Google’s latest update affected many SEO content strategies. It led marketers to return to ensure that their content demonstrated expertise and a primary purpose. For example, if a website were not promoting information determined by Google to benefit “the people,” like providing a product or service, that website’s rankings would go down.
If you want to read more, check out this article that focuses on the latest update by clicking here.
Fix Your Cornerstone Articles
Cornerstone articles are long-form pieces of writing that are the most crucial group of text in an entire website. As a result, these articles drive the most traffic from search engine results. Furthermore, since cornerstone articles take an informational approach, these articles aim to inform rather than sell a product or a service. So, cornerstone articles are crucial to SEO content strategies because it assists with the ranking of the website through search engines.
According to Yoast, cornerstone articles are written in a long form. They bring in details from multiple relevant blog posts from the same website to cover the most important information for consumers.
When strategizing for a routine update to website content, cornerstone articles should be part of it. For example, let’s say you run a website about cooking recipes. In the most popular dish on your site, you have that you use canola oil. Two years later, an article was published on your blog about how bad canola oil is and that it should be avoided. Since the blog post claimed that canola oil is bad, it would be imperative to update all recipes. The first posts that should be updated are the ones that generate a lot of website traffic.
Delete What No Longer Serves You
Since Google’s update, it is recommended to delete posts that are too old and outdated. This advice comes from the fact that marketers may find themselves writing about the same topic or something similar in a newer post. Marketers should heavily consider merging the two articles or removing the old post to keep their website relevant and provide a satisfying experience to users. Marketers should retain all evergreen content when reviewing it, as it will always be relevant to the consumer.
What About Those Other Pages?
While blog posts and cornerstone articles drive most of the traffic to a website, static pages should also be reviewed routinely and updated as needed. For example, an FAQ page on a website may not change as often as the content of a cornerstone article, but over time, customers might have a question not covered by the FAQ. In addition, structures in companies can change. There may be something on the About Me page that should also be changed. Ultimately, keeping these pages up to date allows the customer to keep coming back and possibly make a purchase.
When Google is notified that content has been updated, it will grant a spike in traffic to that page. In addition, the updated information will increase the rankings of that page as users will click on it during their session in search engines. Ultimately, Google loves content that is fresh and published recently.
The bottom line is that static pages matter because Google will rank fresh content higher.
When You Are Updating Website Content
Updating older information and posts can keep websites relevant in search engines. Companies must first start with their most important posts. The older posts have proven to drive website traffic and provide the most pertinent information users are looking for (i.e., cornerstone articles).
Older posts should have traction while being reworked rather than none at all. When applying updates to posts, website content experts recommend that companies copy their old posts elsewhere to make changes before removing the older post from being live. The older post will still have relevancy and ranking on the Google algorithm while updates are made.
Are you ready for high quality content?
Optimizing and updating website content is part of website maintenance. Still, we understand that it can be overwhelming to learn and do all needed to keep a website in shape. As a result, businesses sometimes need help figuring out the best approach to improve SEO content.
Writing content can be challenging, but it does not have to be. MRS Digital Media dedicates time to creating high quality content writing for websites with SEO keyword optimization. If you want to take a deeper look t to ensure that your site has high quality content that will engage your customers, contact us today to learn more.
