Over 90% of blogs on the internet don’t receive ANY traffic. These aren’t exactly thrilling metrics for people that rely on their blog to drive revenue to their business.
So, how do you make sure people can find (and read) your content?
The key is to focus on blogs that are already live on your website first. By optimizing existing content, you’ll have a better shot at increasing traffic to your site and getting more conversions faster.
This step-by-step guide will guide you on how to refresh your existing blog content. Follow these 19 critical optimization steps for quick wins.
1. Prioritize Posts with High Traffic and Conversion Rates
You don’t just want to dive in and start updating all your old posts. You need to be selective. After all, you don’t want to waste time and money on content that doesn’t move the needle.
(I’ve seen businesses do this. They end up burning out on SEO and stopping before they see results.)
Instead, you want to prioritize posts with high traffic and high conversions.
It can take a few days or weeks for Google to find and index new pages. And it can take even longer to rank these pages for specific keywords.
Targeting pages that search engines have already indexed means you’ll see results faster. In short, you won’t have to wait around for Google to crawl new content.
You can use Google Analytics or another SEO tool to determine which blog posts get the most traffic and conversions. Start there.
2. Focus on Evergreen Content
Evergreen content covers topics that people find interesting year-round. By updating these posts, you’ll get more from your investment as they’ll continue to be relevant years later.
Avoid updating posts that aren’t evergreen (old news articles, press releases, trending topics, and product updates). This content is usually only important a few weeks or months after its release.
If this content isn’t ranking or driving traffic, it’s best to simply delete it.
These are low-value pages that detract from your overall site. And updating these posts only wastes resources.
3. Work on Small Batches
Fight the urge to overhaul your website content completely. SEO and content creation aren’t cheap. Creating awesome content that drives results requires a lot of time, effort, energy, and resources.
If your website has 100s of blogs, optimizing your existing content can feel overwhelming.
Instead, focus on small batches (around 10 posts at a time). After you update a small batch of content, evaluate the results and your process.
If you see an increase in traffic, move on to the next batch. If not, dive deeper to see why your content isn’t ranking. Take your findings, adjust your strategy, and continue improving your content.
4. Don’t Over Rely on SEO Tools
There are tons of free and paid SEO tools to help you optimize your content. But, you should use these tools with caution.
Over relying on SEO tools can make your content sound stiff and generic, like a robot. You don’t want to sandblast away your personality by overlying on these applications (especially Yoast).
Remember: Your content is an opportunity to share your unique expertise and approach with prospects. Plus, it shows the personality of your brand and how awesome your team is.
Generic content falls flat. It doesn’t leave an impact. And it doesn’t do much to help your prospects jive with your business.
Don’t be afraid to stand out.
5. Establish a Baseline of Data
Before you make any changes to your content, you need to establish a baseline of data. If you don’t already have Google Analytics (or a relevant tracking tool) set up, prioritize this.
With proper tracking in place, you can quickly see the impact of your optimizations. Plus, you can set KPIs for your marketing team and use the analytics to gauge progress toward your business goals.
Critical Site Metrics to Track:
- Traffic to Site
- Time on Page
- Bounce Rate
- Page Scroll
- Goal Conversion Rate
- Event Conversion Rate
Setting up Google Analytics can be tricky.
But, tracking these key metrics will give you a better idea of how visitors interact with your content. This will help you make the necessary improvements that’ll drive more conversions and revenue to your business.
You can learn how to knock this out here.
6. Identify Search Intent
Identifying search intent is critical if you want people to visit and stay on your site. Search intent is the main goal or reason behind the searcher’s query (a question, statement, or phrase searched).
If your content doesn’t match search intent, users will either ignore it, or they’ll click on it and immediately leave (bounce) because the post won’t answer their questions.
This keeps your content from gaining traction.
Instead, you need to create content that matches search intent. To do that, you need to figure out the intent behind your searchers’ queries.
How to Find Search Intent:
- Using Google Incognito Mode, search the main keyword for your post.
- Look at the top search results, and determine the content type of each result in the SERP.
- Count the various type of content types showing up in the search results.
- Review posts to verify how they address search intent.
Sometimes, most or all of the search results will be similar. When that happens, it’s easy to figure out search intent. Your post should match the types of content there.
If the pages in the search results are mixed (e.g., some are listicles, guides, sales pages, etc.), this usually means that Google hasn’t settled on search intent for that query.
In these situations, you’ll need to use your best judgment.
Review the top-ranking posts and your campaign goals to determine what angle you should take.
7. Choose the Best Keyword
Before optimizing a post, you need to choose a keyword. Your optimizations will center around that main keyword. To do that, you’ll need to conduct keyword research.
There are tons of SEO tools out there that can help with keyword research.
Free SEO Tools for Keyword Research:
Keyword research is critical to the success of your content. Without the right approach, you could end up targeting the wrong keyword and struggling to get your content to rank.
At Lead Comet, we help B2B organizations build a comprehensive SEO strategy that drives results. Our process streamlines keyword research to reduce the frustrations of optimizing your content alone.
8. Align the Content to Your Audience
Your posts should speak directly to your target audience.
If you try to speak to multiple audiences in one piece, your message will fall flat. The content won’t make an impact because it’ll be too general.
Your target audience will have specific pain points, frustrations, fears, and goals. And if you want them to take action, you need content that speaks directly to those issues.
Aim for one message, one audience, and one post.
Discuss with your sales team and leadership who your target audience is. Map out their struggles and challenges. Get all the data you need to speak directly to them.
When you update your existing content, make sure those posts speak directly to your target audience.
9. Expand Content Where Relevant
Longer content isn’t always better. But, you can improve the content by expanding on it.
Start by reviewing other top-ranking posts for your desired keyword and compare that content to your existing post. If you find key areas you’ve overlooked or new strategies that you should include, add those concepts.
However, you should fight the urge to simply copy/paste what’s out there.
This is where a lot of marketers mess up. They misinterpret the skyscraper method (the idea of taking an existing post and expanding on it to make it “better” than what’s out there) as a directive to make every post longer.
That’s not the case.
The goal here is to be the last click. You want your post to answer search intent thoroughly, so your visitors don’t need to search anymore.
Be thorough but concise.
You don’t need 10,000-word posts for every keyword you want to target.
10. Weave in Your Desired CTA
You don’t have to drop your call to action (CTA) at the end of a piece.
Instead, you can weave calls to action throughout your piece. It just needs to feel natural. (For example, this post links to our B2B SEO guide in numerous relevant places. )
However, you don’t want to oversell yourself. Content’s main purpose is to educate. And if you constantly try to shill your products, your readers will get annoyed and look for other sources of information.
When optimizing existing content, try to embed one or two additional CTAs into the posts where they are most relevant.
Best Practices for CTAs:
- Make it relevant to the topic.
- Ensure that it flows naturally.
- Embed throughout the piece (not just at the end).
- Ask the reader to take clear and relevant action.
- Match the form of the CTA with the purpose (e.g., a button for a sale, a form for an email list, or anchored text for a linked resource).
- Map the CTA to the right stage of the customer journey (e.g. newsletter sign-ups or white paper downloads in the blog vs. book an appointment on sales and services pages.)
You can still add a CTA at the end of your post, but it should fit with the flow of the post. Otherwise, people will simply skim over the end and leave.
The key is knowing when to sell, when to wrap up, and when to do both.
11. Use Keywords in Critical Places
When you optimize a post, you should place keywords in the title, relevant headings, and the SEO title. You should also add them to relevant places in the post.
Don’t attempt to force keywords from your keyword research into your blog post. Keyword stuffing will negatively impact your optimizations. Instead, place keywords naturally and as needed.
Headings help crawl bots figure out what your content is about. They also help people skim your post find the information they need faster.
As a result, you should try and place keywords into headings when you can. This will ensure readers and search engines clearly understand the scope of your content.
How to Update Your Title Tag (SEO Title)
The title tag is the (blue) title on a search engine results page:
The SEO title of a post should include your main keyword and not differ drastically from your title.
You don’t want to deceive website visitors. SEO titles that misdirect users into clicking on your content can result in high bounce rates that negatively impact your ranking.
The SEO title doesn’t always need to be identical to your targeted keyword (especially if it feels unnatural).
Google is an advanced (and well-funded) search engine. This is a trillion-dollar business with an extremely complex platform. That said, it understands synonyms and close matches.
Still, you want to be careful.
For example, “tricks”, “strategies”, and “hacks” may all seem similar on the surface. However, depending on the industry, these keywords can pull up different results.
When in doubt, always double-check the search results.
12. Remove or Update Information
Readers always want the latest details and statistics. And if the information in your posts is outdated, it can damage your reputation and drive prospects away from your business.
Updating your content with the latest details can provide a quick and easy boost.
Examples of content that can become dated over time:
- Statistics older than 1 – 3 years
- Service or product pages (i.e., old services, products, or partnerships)
- Events
- Terminology
- Strategies (new technology and approach come out all the time)
- Trends (these can turn into “common sense” practices over time)
You should also set annual reminders to update certain posts. This ensures that your readers get the latest information and that your content has the best chances of ranking.
13. Add Expert Insights
What makes your content stand out is your unique expertise and insights from your field, industry, and niche.
Whether you outsource the content creation to an agency or you have an employee work on the content, you need to make sure an expert reviews it.
This step is often overlooked. Experts are busy. And content can feel like extra homework. But, those insights are critical. It’s what sets generic content apart from thought leadership.
Remember: Anyone can publish content. But it takes an expert’s insights to make it truly helpful to the reader.
14. Add Internal Links
Internal linking keeps visitors on your site longer. This lowers your bounce rate and increases the chances of visitors turning into customers.
Internal links also make it easier for crawl bots to index other pages faster. This ensures search engines crawl your new content faster.
Additionally, interlinking content passes link equity from pages with more backlinks to pages without, giving your content a boost.
In short, add more internal links.
How many should you add? There’s no exact link ratio. Still, aim for at least 2 – 4 internal links for every 1000 words.
Just be sure to use relevant anchor text. The anchor text should preview the content (reducing anxiety around the click).
Internal links should also add value to the post. You don’t want to add links for the sake of adding links. It won’t move the needle.
15. Add External Links
External links are valuable for numerous reasons:
- To back up what we’re saying (citations)
- To explain complex ideas quickly (if they’re out of the post’s scope, for instance)
- To add resources or value that we think would be beneficial to readers.
You need to choose credible, external resources because our audience trusts you. In fact, people trust businesses more than governments.
You don’t want to damage that trust with inaccurate content. That’s why it’s important to cite resources properly.
As you add external links to update your existing posts, remember that your anchor text relates the linked content (just like internal links).
16. Format Blog for Readability
Most readers on the web will scan content instead of reading your posts word for word. That’s why you need to ensure your post is skimmable when you optimize it.
Here’s how you make your blogs more skimmable:
Add Headers and Subheaders
Use headings and subheadings to highlight important topics or concepts.
All blogs should have an H1. (This is typically the title of the post.) But, H2s – H6 are useful subheadings you can use to organize the text.
But don’t get carried away. You’ll rarely use anything lower than H3s.
The depth of your content will determine how you use your headers. If you find that you need H4s or lower, evaluate the section. It may be better to break that section up into smaller pieces.
Break Up the Text
Speaking of breaking up the text, your readers HATE walls of text. When they see long paragraphs, they see work. And they bounce.
Break up large blocks of text. Most paragraphs should be 1 – 3 sentences. You’ll occasionally have longer ones, but it should be rare.
Breaking up the text of your article makes it more accessible to skimmers and provides visual variety. This makes your content easier to follow.
Still, the rules of grammar still apply.
Don’t break up ideas just to keep paragraphs short. You don’t want to confuse readers.
Use Bold and Italic Fonts
Format the text of your blog post with bold and italic text.
This type of formatting helps the reader’s eye track what is going on in the piece more efficiently. By doing this, you increase your content’s skimmability.
Plus, it’s a great way to emphasize points for clarity.
Add Bulleted Points and Numbers
Bulleted points and numbers offer a way to organize consumable lists of ideas, actions, and substeps.
Use bullet points to:
- Highlight key elements you want your readers to understand
- Group specific, related elements
Use numbers when:
- Emphasizing the specific order of actions
- Highlighting a specific number of items
These aren’t concrete rules, though.
Bulleted points and numbers can be interchangeable depending on your style (as long as it doesn’t confuse the reader).
Add Images, Infographics, Video, and Other Visuals
Visual material like images, infographics, graphs, and videos draw the reader’s eye by offering visual variety.
Aim to add at least 1 to 4 visuals per post. But, they must add value to the content. Never drop images into a post to “break up the text.”
Your content should captivate your audience. The images should accent it.
Use visuals to:
- Explain and simplify complex topics
- Emphasize and reiterate an important process or point
- Engage and stimulate the reader
Three questions to ask when deciding on images or videos:
- Is this relevant to the topic? Don’t add a visual to simply “break up the text.”
- Does this add to what I am saying in this post? In this subsection? For this topic? If you answer “no” to any of these questions, remove it or find a better asset.
- Is this a high-quality image or video? Avoid generic stock photos, low-resolution images, or poorly done videos and infographics because they make your content look cheap.
Include Image Alt Text
Alt text is the text that describes the image. This description adds context and functionality to the visual information in your blog post—especially if an image fails to load.
It also improves accessibility to readers with visual impairments or disabilities.
And alt text can help search engines determine and better understand the image, helping improve your chances to rank higher.
But, don’t attempt to force unrelated keywords into your alt text. Google views this as spam, and it can negatively impact your site.
Edit for Readability
Easy is good. Especially for your audience. When optimizing existing blog posts, ensure the content is easy to read. This ensures your audience understands without much effort.
How to Increase Your Posts Readability:
- Present Information in a logical order.
- Write short(er) sentences.
- Apply various sentence lengths and structures.
- Use simpler words.
- Use transitions.
- Replace passive voice with active voice.
Use These Tools to Increase Your Post’s Readability:
17. Update URL (And Redirect if Needed)
Most times, leaving the URL the same and updating the page title to match your main keyword or topic more accurately is the safest bet.
However, there are times when updating the URL of an existing post is necessary:
- It focuses on the wrong keyword.
- It doesn’t match your topic.
- It might deceive or confuse your target audience.
- It’s excessively long or unnecessarily complex
- It’s out-of-date.
If the blog’s existing URL matches any of the above, you’ll need to set up a 301 redirect. Typically, you’ll need to use a plug-in or rely on features in your CMS to create the redirect.
Don’t assume the platform will redirect automatically. You’ll end up with a bunch of broken links.
And that will negatively impact your site performance.
18. Avoid Tags
Businesses mistakenly believe tags are critical for SEO. They’re not. In fact, they can make it harder for search engines to crawl your site.
Blog posts aren’t like Instagram, where you need a bunch of hashtags for users to figure out what the post is about. Tags make things messy.
For every new tag you create, it creates another page that needs to be crawled. Plus, it can make your URL structure unnecessarily complex.
And that can make it even harder for crawl bots to index your site.
Instead, delete the tags and focus on categories. Every post should belong to a category. And your blog should have a limited number of categories dictated by its areas of expertise.
For example, you can break SEO into five categories: Technical SEO, Link Building, Content Creation, Analytics, and Reporting. (There are more, but these are the main ones.)
Posts should fall into a category. This makes it easier to organize them. As a result, your readers will find the content they need faster.
Plus, you can set up your analytics to track conversions and traffic by category to see which topics you should invest more time and resources into improving.
19. Review Metrics and Optimize
As you publish your updated posts, you need to track relevant metrics. Specifically, you need to monitor the traffic and conversions on newly optimized posts.
The easiest way to do this is to monitor traffic in Google Analytics. Regularly monitor new posts to see if there’s an uptick in visitors.
Give it time.
It can take up to six months (or longer) before you see the full value of your blog optimizations.
Once you see the lift from your efforts, you need to evaluate the improved content and figure out what’s working and why. After, you can apply those insights to your future content optimizations.
How to Optimize Content Faster
We get that this post is a lot to take in.
For a blog to rank in competitive niches and drive more revenue to your business, it needs to be better than what’s out there. It also needs optimization for search. (Plus, your website needs to be lean and free of technical errors.)
And when you’re trying to grow your business, that can be a lot to manage.
At Lead Comet, we help businesses get more revenue from organic searches. From building an SEO roadmap to optimizing old content and creating new content, we work with B2B organizations like yours to get results that last.
Learn more about our process and the results we get for businesses.