Are you including maintaining website content as part of your blog strategy?
While new content creation is often seen as the cornerstone to planning a blog strategy, you can’t forget about keeping content updated regularly.
This is because old, outdated content doesn’t bring value to your customers. In fact, it can send them to the competition’s website and potentially have a negative impact on SEO.
One of the challenges businesses face is knowing what to do in terms of keeping the content updated in the first place. If you know that your old blog posts need updating but you aren’t sure where to start, consider these key factors when maintaining website content.
1. Give Your Content Another Round of Editing
First, read your old blog post from top to bottom. Do you notice any typos or grammatical errors? Personally, I tend to catch the most amount of errors a day or two after I write the content—which is why I never edit content on the same day I write it.
If you don’t trust your own judgment, ask someone who has an eye for editing who can assist.
Determine the Quality of Your Blog Writing
The quality of blog writing is essential to reaching many content marketing goals, including SEO, conversions, and user experience. Take an objective look at your blog writing and ask yourself the following questions:
- Is it comprehensive and easy to read?
- Does it provide sufficient information about the topic at hand?
- Does it offer a customer-centric purpose?
- Is there a connection between paragraphs?
- Do the sections and subheaders make sense in accordance with the primary topic?
- Is it trustworthy?
While basic spelling and grammar are important, there is more to blog editing than looking for technical errors. Your website content should offer the best user experience possible.
For example, one of the common pitfalls of bad blogging user experience is awkward keywords. Forcing keywords into content makes it sound look and sound like spam, sending a major red flag to your customers.
Fixing Awkward SEO Content
The good news is those awkward keywords don’t have to ruin your efforts of maintaining website content. If you run into an awkward keyword, which is common especially with geographical terms, you can use stop words to help with flow. The chart below provides some ideas to guide you through the editing process with awkward SEO content.
Fixing awkward SEO content is essential to user experience as well as SEO rankings. Not only do you need to look for awkward keywords, but you also need to consider how often that you’re using the keyword in the content. Although the best practice is to shoot for approximately 2%-3% keyword density, write naturally above all else.
2. Rewriting Website Content
After you reach the end of your blog editing, you might determine that the content needs entirely rewritten. If you aren’t sure whether to dive into a blog writing project like this, these are a few signs that you should think about a rewrite:
- The content is not aligned with your brand’s quality guidelines.
- There are many outdated facts or advice that is no longer applicable.
- It does not educate, empower, or inspire the reader.
- It does not showcase your expertise in the best light.
- It does not powerfully convince your audience that you have a solution to their problem.
If you’ve decided to move forward with rewriting blog content, the following blogging tips can get you on the right track to better quality blogs.
Work with the Strong Elements of Old Content
A lot of times there are some nuggets in old blog content that are still good to use today. The first step I take with blog rewriting is to look closely at content that shines in comparison to the entire blog. Even a few good sentences provide structure to write the new rewrite around.
If you look through the content and determine nothing is worth salvaging, you can start from scratch making an outline with the primary points you want to make in your content.
Add New Information
Depending on the context of your rewritten content, another logical rewriting practice is to find new information to add to your blog content. If your current blog has statistics in it, revisit those references and determine if the data is still accurate. You’ll also want to pull out any facts that might be time sensitive and ensure the information is current. Take some time for additional research and weave the new information into the blog.
Rewrite Your Headline
The headline is one of the elements of blog content that directly impacts traffic. Carefully review your headline and determine how engaging the headline is for your audience. Would you click on your headline if you were a customer?
If you aren’t sure, take a look at your Google Analytics or Google Search Console. If traffic and click-through are low, this can provide clues of how good of a job your headline is doing.
When you’re rewriting the headline, one technique is to create curiosity. My blogging tips video below shows how you can create curiosity with blog content with several tips on headline writing.
While creating curiosity can certainly increase clicks, this isn’t the only approach for maintaining website content and writing powerful headlines. Other good practices for blog headline writing include:
- Topics that clearly and accurately represents your blog content.
- Headlines that aren’t too long or short. The best headline length for engagement is 16-18 words.
- Contains any necessary keywords for SEO.
- Asks a question or creates urgency.
- Uses numbered lists.
Include a Call-to-Action
This is the perfect time to review the CTA of your content. Remember that your blog readers are not mind readers and many times you need to tell them what to do next. Make sure the CTA is placed somewhere that’s easy to find. You’ll also want to make sure that the CTA relates to the blog topic somehow. If it’s irrelevant, your readers are bound to bypass it without hesitating.
While you’re rewriting blog content, you’ll want to keep keywords in mind—especially if you’re concerned with SEO. The next approach to maintaining website content is overviewing your keyword strategy and updating keywords.
3. Freshen up Your Keyword Strategy
Did you know that keyword data changes? What might be a killer keyword today can become too competitive to rank for several months later. When you return to a blog post or content piece, take a look at the keywords and analyze how they are working for that particular content piece.
Maintaining Website Content with Keyword Updates
Look over your blog and determine the keywords you’re using in that post. The first place to start is to determine where that specific blog post is ranking for that keyword. Type the keyword into Google (use incognito or private browsing so it doesn’t alter results by your cookies or browsing history) and see if you find your website on the first 3 pages.
Remember, the first page receives up to 71% of the clicks in Google’s search results, although some sources report as high as 92%. Results on page 2 receive 6% of clicks, which doesn’t leave much of anything left for page 3 and beyond.
Once you determine the placement for your website, there are several actions you can take with maintaining website content.
Scenario 1: You’re Ranking On Page 1 for Your Keyword
Great! You’ve already overcome a major hurdle, especially if you are already ranking for a competitive keyword. However, now isn’t the time to kick back and relax.
Even though you’re ranking on the 1st page for your keyword, check to see if you are in position 1-3 on page 1. The 1st link receives 75% of the clicks with the amount descending as you go down the page.
Focus your goals on getting as close to the top of page 1 if possible. One way to do this is to study the type of content that is currently ranking for positions 1-3 for your particular keyword. What does this content include that yours doesn’t? How can you make it better? Can you provide extra media such as video or infographics? What about quizzes?
Another option is to leverage your position as #1 by implementing a few more keywords into the mix. The idea is to find synonymous keywords in relation to your primary keyword. From there, you can use Google suggest or even SEMRush to unveil additional longtail keywords to work into the content to bring in more traffic.
Scenario 2: You’re Ranking On Page 2-3 for Your Keyword
If your content already has keywords and it’s ranking on page 2 or 3, this is the perfect opportunity to give yourself a bump in search traffic while improving the content. Depending on the competition of the keyword and the domain authority (DA) of the websites outranking you, this can be a fairly long process.
You’ll have to work to outdo the competition on several factors, including:
- The quality and depth of your content.
- Ensuring that your SEO for blog posts includes a strong headline, optimized subheaders, etc.
- Adding relevant variations of the keyword.
- Including internal links as well as outbound links to high DA (yet non-competing) websites.
- Creating an all-inclusive resource for the topic at hand.
While maintaining website content can help you rank for your desired terms, it’s smart to include ongoing blog writing into your content strategy to help develop a strong SEO presence.
4. Fix up Your Formatting
Updating and maintaining website content doesn’t begin and end with editing written content. Blog formatting is another important yet overlooked factor that can make or break user experience.
When it comes to blog formatting, these are the basics to make sure that content looks like it was crafted by a professional:
Use Proper Header Tags
Header tags are important for SEO, but they also help break up your content and make it easier to read. This is especially true for long form blog content, but header tags are also useful for blogs that are 500 words and sometimes less.
Use header tags to organize your content as you jump from one thought to another. The idea is for the header tag to bring structure to your blog so your audience understands the flow of the blog.
Implement Adequate White Space
White space isn’t only important with graphic design. Using white space while maintaining website content makes everything look less cluttered. It also ensures that the audience doesn’t get overwhelmed
Keep Spacing Consistent
You might not think much about spacing with content but it can honestly make or break the way that your blog looks to your audience. Unfortunately, not all blogging platforms provide automated spacing technology. This leaves it up to you to manually space out your content so it looks clean throughout the entire post.
One word of advice is to only include one space between the end of the sentence and the beginning of another. Long ago, it was common practice to provide two spaces. Today, especially with blog writing and other variations of web writing, double spacing looks outdated.
Be Mindful of Font
What font are you using for your blog content? In terms of readability, use 16-point font. This font size is ideal for both mobile and desktop computers.
You’ll also want to consider the font that you’re using. Choose a web-safe font that’s easy to read.
Keep in mind that font makes a psychological impact on readers, so it’s important to choose carefully. The chart below from Crazyegg gives insight into the psychology of fonts.
Blog formatting, in a sense, is a visual aspect of maintaining website content. To continue on this theme, the next blogging tips discuss the graphics you use in your content.
5. Update Old and Boring Graphics
Did you know that including images in your content makes it more memorable? It also helps to improve the context of the message you’re trying to portray.
When it comes to choosing the correct type of images for your blog posts, there are no hard and fast rules. However, there are some guidelines you can follow in my blogging tips video:
Resources for Blog Images
If you’ve decided that you’re ready to upgrade those old photos, you might be wondering where you can get images that’ll help make your blog stand out. These are a few of the most popular resources (some free, some paid) for where you can get new images for your website content:
- Deposit Photos – $29 for 30 images a month
- Unsplash – Free
- Adobe Stock – $79 for 40 images a month
- Canva – Free and Premium, Includes Editing Software
- Storyblocks – $9 for unlimited photos a month
- Pexels – Free
- Rawpixel – Free
Once you have a resource for your blog images, try to keep the image content as consistent as possible. Choose images that are similar in style for a cohesive look and feel across your entire website.
Get Help Maintaining Website Content
Our ongoing blogging packages can help maintain your website content by keeping it fresh and relevant all year long! Check out our blogging services packages and let us know how we can help with maintaining website content, whether it’s bringing something brand new to the table or updating old and existing blog posts.
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