Most of us in the content industry have written a fair few blogs, some have flopped and some have hit the jackpot. They're your main breadwinners and a select percentage, the elite, bring a large proportion of traffic to your blog.
Over time, however, these blogs become tired, they start to drop in traffic and the nice bump in your contacts that you used to get from them starts to fade. Many marketers just accept this, suck it up and create new content, leaving these pieces to die a slow, but sad death. It really sucks to see your blogs dropping in traffic, but all is not lost. Or at least it doesn't have to be.....
All it takes is a little refresh, a face lift, a modernization to bring these blogs back to health and get them alive and kicking.
Here are a few examples of Marketing Envy's blogs that have been refreshed and revived recently.
Case Study 1: Reddit marketing for B2B’s: A match made in heaven
At it's peak, this blog had an organic traffic volume of 55 sessions a month (Feb 2021), not a jaw dropper, but still a nice amount of traffic. By March 2022 it had dropped to just 2 sessions a month, a sad state of affairs for any blog. So what did we do?
1. We updated it, adding relevant recent stats and links to content from the last year
2. We lengthened it, adding at least 30% to it's length, not just fluff, but useful, important content
3. We analyzed the main keywords bringing traffic and made sure they appeared in it frequently, ensuring that the primary keyword was in both the title and the meta data
4. We made sure pages on our site were linking to it, with the links being text based and containing the primary keyword
5. We updated the publish date and resubmitted it to Google Search Console for re-indexing
What happened?
At first, not much, but after a few days we started to see a difference and this month, June 2022 we have already beaten our record peak traffic volume. And the traffic is only rising.
Not only that, but our time on page has increased to over 6.5 minutes from around 2 minutes, that's more than a 300% increase and our bounce rate has dropped by close to 6%!
Case Study 2: 13 Competitor Monitoring Tools B2B Marketers Need To Know
This blog was also a high performer in 2021; in March 2021 it reached 104 organic visits in a month, but by March 2022 it was down to just 1 visit. Depressing, ain't it? So what did we do, a refresh of course.
We:
1) Updated the piece with current tools we are using here at Marketing Envy. We removed ones that no longer make the cut and updated all the necessary relevant information
2) We added a few more tools, lengthening the blog and provided more information than we gave previously on each and every tool, making the blog more informative and useful
3) We ensured the linking was up to scratch and reassessed the keywords ensuring they were used correctly
4) We updated the publish date and resubmitted it to Google Search Console for re-indexing
What happened?
Well, we only just did this one, but already we're seeing a significant rise in organic traffic
Case Study 3: Envy’s 4-step guide to building winning core startup values
This one is an interesting one. We started off with decent traffic, think 57-58 sessions a month in 2017. Things were good, until traffic started to drop off and by 2019, we were at just 5 visits a month. So, we did a refresh. Well, this one exceeded all expectations. Not only did we bring traffic right back up, but we more than doubled it, reaching 136 sessions in January 2021.
In short, refreshes work. So how do you go about it?
How to Refresh an Old Blog Post in 10 Steps
- Find out what keywords you are ranking for on Google Search Console and if they are relevant and have volume (you can use semrush.com or any other volume tool). If they are relevant then ensure they appear throughout the blog, in the title and in the metadata
- Check your H1, H2, H3 tags and your alt text is working
- Update all statistics to relevant statistics - think the current year, not 5 years ago
- Update all links to content that was published in the last 1-2 years, preferably just 1 year.
- Ensure links on other pages are leading to your blog. Make sure they are text-based and contain the keyword you are trying to rank for.
- Update the content so it is up to date. There is no point talking about how a pandemic is beginning if we have been living it for years already
- Lengthen the content, no we don't mean adding 30% more words of fluff. Add useful, relevant content that enhances the blog
- Consider updating your feature image to entice people when they are browsing on social
- Republish the blog with the new date
- Submit the URL to be re-indexed on Google
and hopefully, see magic start to happen....
There are many reasons for refreshing a blog. One of them is traffic, which is the one we have covered in this blog. Another important reason is conversion rate, watch out for a future post on how to optimize a post to improve its conversion rate.
In the meantime, get refreshing and get in touch with us for more marketing wisdom:
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