As of today, our blog has 250 published posts.
And according to Ahrefs' Content Explorer, 61 pages have been republished at least once.
And if you look at the traffic trends over the past three years, you'll see that nearly all of
our republished pages have consistently been gaining more and more search traffic over time.
Now, the best part about this SEO strategy is that increases in traffic can happen almost
immediately, as you can see here, here, and here.
So if you want to know how to get organic traffic fast by simply refreshing older content, then stay tuned.
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When you update content, you can't just recreate any old page and expect to get a quick boost
in organic traffic.
There are some requirements in page selection and you actually need to update the content
with some thought.
Plus, your website should follow at least the basic SEO best practices.
So you should have good content, a technically sound website, and have some kind of website
authority; meaning, you're not a new site or have no links pointing at any of your pages.
Updating content isn't a magic trick that'll send a torrent of organic traffic your way.
So if you fall short of this criteria, then I recommend watching some of our beginner-level videos first
to amp up your site.
And I'll link those up in the description.
But if your site matches this criteria, then let's get started with the first step, which
is to diagnose pages where your content is responsible for underperformance.
Content is obviously a huge contributor to your ranking success.
But it's not always going to be the main reason why you're not ranking in the top 3 positions.
So the first thing we need to do is actually identify that a content issue exists.
And there are four main things to look out for.
First, check the age of your page.
It takes time to acquire backlinks and for Google to understand where your page fits
in the SERP.
So as a general rule of thumb, you should give your page around 6-12 months to rank
before considering a major update.
Second, you need to check that the page is targeting a meaningful keyword.
And for the purposes of this video, I'll define a "meaningful" keyword as a topic that has
potential to get search traffic.
For example, this post on how to start a link building campaign fast, isn't targeting a keyword.
So we wouldn't update it for the purpose of getting more organic traffic.
You should be able to tell right away whether you're targeting a keyword from your page
title and URL.
But if you're not 100% sure, you can double- check if the topic has traffic potential by
going to Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer and entering a query you think could have traffic potential.
Then scroll down to the SERP overview table and look at the amount of search traffic the top
ranking pages get.
And now you just need to assess whether the topic is worth updating based on the time and
resources required for the potential traffic gain.
Now, I don't want you to think that I'm saying to only update pages with traffic potential.
For example, we create data studies which helps us build links, contribute to the SEO
community, and also flex our big-data muscles.
But since we're talking about updating pages for more organic traffic, we'll skip over these
types of pages for the purposes of this tutorial.
Alright, so third, make sure your page isn't already ranking in the top 3 for its target keyword.
Minor updates are usually fine, but generally speaking, if you're already ranking in the top
positions, you probably don't want to do a full rewrite and potentially lose those rankings.
There's obviously exceptions to this rule, but let's keep this tutorial simple.
Alright, so to find pages that aren't ranking in the top 3 positions, you can use either
Google Search Console or Ahrefs' Site Explorer.
With Search Console, go to the Performance or Search Results report, and then make sure
that you have the average position selected.
Next, let's set a Positions filter to only show keywords that are ranking in position 4 or higher.
From here, you'd want to look through your list of queries and try and spot topics you're targeting.
Now, since Search Console shows average positions, it usually isn't a great representation
of where your page ranks today.
So you can use Ahrefs Site Explorer to get more current ranking positions.
So I'll enter our blog URL here and run the search.
Next, I'll go to the Top pages report, which will show us pages that generate the most
search traffic in our blog subfolder.
Ideally, you want to find pages where you're not ranking in the top 3 for your primary keyword.
And an easy way to spot this is to look at the page URLs, along with the top keyword
and its position.
So after going through the list, I found a post that can benefit from an update.
Our guide on guest blogging is ranking in position 3 for "links and guest."
But hey, our target keyword is actually "guest blogging," so there's a good chance it's ranking
lower than we'd like.
So if I click on the keywords number here, you'll see that we're ranking in position 7
for our target query "guest blogging."
Now, this page actually checks all the boxes that we've gone through so far.
It's been longer than 12 months since our last major update, it's targeting a meaningful
keyword, and it's an underperforming page.
Now, the last thing we need to do is make sure our subpar rankings aren't due to
backlink-related factors.
To do this, we need to find out how many backlinks the top-ranking pages have and assess the quality
of those links.
So let's go to the SERP overview table in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer for this query.
So, here you can see all ranking pages as well as their SEO metrics.
And the main metrics we're looking at are the number of Referring Domains, which are
unique websites that link to the page, Domain Rating, which represents the overall strength
of a website's backlink profile, and URL rating, which represents the overall strength of a page's
backlink profile.
So based on these metrics, our page has plenty of unique referring domains and high website
authority, yet we're being outranked by other so-called "weaker" pages.
Now, we may not be able to rank in the first position because of the sheer amount of links the page has,
but a jump from position 7 to position 2 or 3 could give us a decent bump in traffic for a topic
that has a lot of business value for our company.
And so therefore, this page could benefit from an update.
We have a full video on assessing keyword and ranking difficulty, so I'll link that up for
you in the description.
Alright, so now that we've identified a page to update, it's time to refresh it.
And this requires a bit of research and decision making.
The first thing you'll want to do is assess search intent and make sure your page matches it.
Search intent means the reason behind a searchers query.
And the best way to do this is to look at the top-ranking pages and identify the 3 C's
of search intent.
The first C is content type.
Content type can usually be categorized into blog posts, product, category, and landing pages.
So based on the SERP, these are all blog posts including ours.
The second C is content format.
And this applies more to blog posts and landing pages.
A few common blog formats you'll see are how-tos, tutorials, list posts, and opinion editorials.
For a landing page, that might be something like a tool or a calculator.
In this case, you'll see a mixture of "complete guides" and a couple "what is guest blogging"
type posts.
We've gone with the how-to format.
And the third C is content angle.
Content angle is often depicted in the title as the "benefit."
It's basically your hook as to why someone should click and who it's for.
Based on the top-ranking pages, it looks like the "ultimate guide" posts are hitting the angle
of thoroughness.
Whereas the "what is guest blogging" posts are targeting beginners.
Ours on the other hand is actually targeting more of an advanced audience.
We've gone with the angle of building high-quality links at scale, which probably isn't appealing or
helpful for a beginner.
So overall, our post matches search intent but it also tells me that we're likely missing
a lot of depth and context for a beginner-level audience; whom in my opinion are the ones
searching for the query "guest blogging."
Another interesting observation from this SERP is that the "what is guest blogging"
pages are actually ranking higher than the more authoritative pages with significantly
fewer referring domains.
So something to consider is that these pages may actually serve searcher intent better than
the other pages.
So if we were to update this page, we'd probably include a short section on "What is Guest Blogging"
within the content.
Now, I want to illustrate my point on the importance of matching search intent with an example.
In November, 2018, we published a post targeting "what is seo."
And the post was created as an expert roundup where we asked seasoned SEOs what search engine
optimization meant to them.
The post was great, but it didn't match search intent.
As you can see from the SERP, these pages are posts for beginners with basic information
on the definition of SEO.
As a result, our organic traffic growth fell short of its full potential.
We then updated the post on September 5th, 2019 and almost immediately got a huge spike
in traffic.
And it continues to grow.
So bottomline, if your page isn't perfectly matching searcher intent, then your traffic
and rankings will be limited.
The next thing you need to do is analyze the top-ranking relevant pages.
Now, since we've already pinpointed that we have a content issue rather than a links- or
technical-related one, we need to see what the top ranking pages are doing right.
So this would require you to manually visit the pages and analyze key points that are
being made.
And you don't need to actually read every single post word for word.
You just want to get an understanding of structure and key talking points.
And because the majority of pages have gone with the "complete guide" angle, I'll open up
these three pages since that's the angle we'd go with too.
The easiest place to start is to look at heading tags because it'll tell you the main points that
are discussed throughout the post.
To speed up the process, you can use Ahrefs' SEO toolbar and use the on-page feature which
is free for everyone.
Just click the Page icon and you'll see a list of the main headings.
Then do the same for the other pages.
So I've put the headings in a Google Sheet and now we're just looking for similar topics
that are covered by the top-ranking pages.
So a couple of them talk about guest blogging goals, they all talk about finding guest posts
opportunities, preparing your pitch, writing the actual post, and so on.
So your typical step-by-step guide to guest blogging.
And again, we'd probably include a section on "What is Guest Blogging," so I add that as a separate note.
Alright, so this should give you a decent outline to work with to write a great post.
But there's one last thing that I think is worth doing.
And that's to analyze the page's backlink profile.
Since we're updating a page and we've ruled out that links aren't the reason for the page's
underperformance, it's worth looking at the page's backlinks to see why people linked to it.
For example, if you have a post that includes stats and people linked to you because of
that stat, generally speaking, you should include it in your updated post so the link
stays relevant.
Does this play a role in rankings?
I can't say it does or it doesn't.
But only good can come from it, assuming the point is still valid, accurate, and up to date.
Plus, if a lot of people are linking to you because of something you've mentioned,
then it could lead to more links going forward.
To see your backlink profile, go to Ahrefs' Site Explorer and enter the URL of the page
you're updating.
Next, go to the Backlinks report.
From here, you can just skim through the list and look for unique reasons why people are
linking to you.
So as you can see here, we got a link from Entrepreneur because of a stat mentioning 20%.
And the link below that also talks about a traffic increase by 20%.
So to quickly see how many links we got because of this stat, I'll scroll back up
and enter "20" into the Include box.
And I'll also set the Search filter to only look in the surrounding text and link anchor.
And there are nearly 60 unique pages that have linked to this page because of that stat,
so it's probably worth mentioning.
Now, you don't have to include everything you find in the Backlinks report.
Just do it if it's still relevant, adds value, and makes sense with the context of your page.
Alright, so after doing this, you should have a thorough outline of the key things to include
in your content.
The last step is to republish your post and submit it for reindexing.
If you use a CMS like WordPress, change your published date to the current date, and hit Update.
After you can resubmit your URL in Google Search Console and request reindexing.
Just enter the URL in the search bar.
And then hit the Request Indexing link.
From my experience, Google recrawls the page almost immediately.
So if you've done everything right and your page matched all of the aforementioned requirements,
you can sometimes see an immediate bump in rankings and traffic.
Now, you don't have to actually request indexing, you can also wait for Google to recrawl the page
which should have the same effect.
So I encourage you to go and do a content audit of your site to see which pages could
benefit from a full-blown update.
And we have a full tutorial on doing a content audit as well as a free template that'll do
the heavy lifting for you.
So I'll leave a link to that in the description.
Now, if you found this video to be helpful, make sure to like, share and subscribe for
more actionable SEO and marketing tutorials.
And if you have any questions, leave one in the comments below.
I'll see you in the next tutorial.