Us marketers constantly push new content. Since not everything sticks, we create, create and create until something does. From writing new webpages to scheduling a steady flow of social posts, we’re content creation machines!
Caught in this hustle of quick turnarounds and a high demand for results, it can be easy to focus ahead on the next new thing, instead of reflecting back on the old.
Many of us have active blogs, including some industry professionals that are posting weekly— even daily. With the word “optimization” thrown around all the time, especially in the context of search engine optimization (SEO), we’re mindful to optimize our content before it rolls out. But how are you extending its life beyond the once-and-done push?
Reoptimizing an old post often takes less effort than creating something from scratch and helps to create a solid foundation of quality, evergreen content across your entire blog.
We’re here to address the often overlooked concept of content optimization, or giving your already published posts a facelift, to save time and increase your blog traffic.
Content optimization is making improvements to your webpage’s copy and other elements that matter to search engines, like broken links, title tags, images, etc. Content optimization can also be used to enhance content for users— such as adding structure, depth and flow— to keep readers engaged.
If you have some blog posts that aren’t performing well, they could use some lovin’. Here’s why:
Get ready to gear up. These six content optimization ideas could really help you increase your blog traffic and improve your organic rankings.
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We all know we’re supposed to optimize our blog posts for better search engine performance, but many authors aren’t sure which steps to take to ensure their writing is SEO-friendly. Keyword optimization is a good place to start.
You may have been hearing people saying “keywords are dead” and that Google and other search engines don’t use them anymore to determine rankings. This is a crazy exaggeration spun off of Google’s algorithm change to focus more heavily on topical associations, instead of strictly rewarding keywords.
Keywords are still a hella important part of your content marketing strategy, and a data-driven SEO refresh could drastically (and quickly) improve your organic rankings.
There may be some old blog posts that were published without a specific keyword phrase in mind, and these are prime targets for your reoptimization efforts. Each blog post should have its own main keyword and a handful of semantic, supporting keywords to show topical association. This helps to avoid keyword-stuffing and shows the search engine that you are genuinely addressing a wide breadth of topics.
Use this article to help you find the right Google keywords for your blog posts.
Once you’ve picked your targets, make sure to drizzle the terms into your:
If some of your already existing blog posts aren’t as long as you’d like them to be, consider making them more robust by expanding upon your written content.
Although boosting your word count can also boost your rankings, the formula for its success is more complicated. More words doesn’t always mean better ranking. Content depth plays a huge role in the equation. The linked article outlines helpful tools to determine a rough word count for your topic and explains how you can add depth to your posts. Give it a read-through.
The key takeaway here is: access the value of your old blog post’s content. Look for sections that could use a facelift to further help your readers and spend the extra time to elaborate on what’s most important.
More people click on posts with images than not, according to every study forever (or at least that’s what it seems like).
If your old post only has one image in it, hunt for ways to add additional visuals. Not only do images add a change of stimulus for the reader, breaking up the monotony of heavy (and visually boring) blocks of text, but they also give your post some extra SEO juice.
Because images can rank on Google Image searches, forgetting to optimize your images is a huge missed organic ranking opportunity.
Here’s a few ways to fully utilize your blog images:
Download the Beginner's Guide to Inbound Marketing to get started.
If you reference a credible source, link back to their page— especially if that site is already ranking organically for your query or similar search terms. Google’s validated it uses backlinks as a ranking factor, and linking off to other sites shows the search engine that you are talking about something related.
Not only does it help Google’s algorithm to determine semantic relation, but a post without any references could come off as poorly researched. Linking off to credible, trusted sources shows both search engines and readers that your information is valid and supported by reputable players in the industry.
But won’t adding links send searchers away from your page? Nope. Just another SEO myth. To be safe, check the option “Open in a separate tab.” This way, your original article will remain open and increase your time-on-page metrics— and give your viewer a chance to hop back to your page without starting a new session.
In addition to linking off to others, you should be mindful of who is linking to you. The more sites that say your blog post is rad, the better chance you have of ranking. While asking for links can come off as spammy or annoying, there are ways you can build new links through email— you just have to be genuine and strategic.
Simply reoptimizing old content could attract some new linkers, but you could also try to fix broken or lost links, write a guest post or get even more creative. We have twelve backlink builder ideas here for you to try some new tactics.
More and more people are clicking “Play” instead of reading. In fact, one-third of all time online is spent watching video.
Try adding a video in tandem with your blog post. Whether it’s an instructional, step-by-step tutorial or a fast-paced preview of what’s to come in the text below, it’s been proven time and time again that videos not only boost engagement but that some people simply learn better through these motion visuals.
If you embed a video at the top of or within your blog, don’t forget to add closed-captioning so its content will be screened by search engines. This SEO play can help to boost your rankings!
Depending on where you decide to host the video, you could generate even more traffic from platforms like YouTube— the world’s second largest search engine— and create content that’s worth rewatching and sharing. It also means you have just one more piece of content to push on social media too.
Use video in more than just your blogs. Here’s a few creative ways to add video everywhere, from customer support emails to on your FAQ page.
Google itself compared search results to warm cookies, saying both “are best when they’re fresh.” The search engine likes results that are relevant and recent, and although different queries have different freshness preferences, making “frequent updates” to any form of content can help to improve your chance of ranking.
Even if you’re already getting a flow of organic traffic to a post, you can still go into the blog and make improvements. As long as you focus on adding more depth and don’t remove content, you won’t lose rankings— you’ll likely gain more traffic.
For older blogs that aren’t seeing the light of day, consider unpublishing them as you temporality rework them. We don’t mean making an edit, hitting save and update. Make this content no longer live by clicking “Unpublish” or “Archive.”
Spruce up the draft with some of the content optimization practices mentioned above. Once it’s ready to roll, republish it. If you keep the same URL, you won’t lose any backlinks. You’ll also have a fresh, recent published date and the search engines will recrawl your data, giving you a better chance to rank than if you simply made a revision.
This is just the tip of the content optimization iceberg. We’ve touched upon some ways to update your posts to increase your blog traffic, but one huge principal we didn’t cover is conversion path optimization.
If the answers is “no” to any of these questions, you could benefit from inbound marketing. Evolve your content marketing strategy by targeting the right audience and establishing some powerful lead generation methods, with our help.
Download the Beginner's Guide to Inbound Marketing to get started. If it all seems overwhelming, head over to our Blog Optimization services page or our SEO services page and let us increase your blog traffic and conversions for you.