It's Time to Evaluate Your Existing Content
As marketers, we steady our eyes on the horizon, focusing on what currently transpires and what’s to come. If we glance back, it’s to gather historical data or to assess the potential of old strategies. However, this creates blind spots towards the untapped potential (or negative impact) of older content.
It’s important to semi-regularly evaluate past materials, keeping an eye out for content which you can:
Refresh to reflect changing industry standards and promote once more
Leave in its current state
Repurpose for the benefit of a new content initiative
Delete due to brand misrepresentation or underwhelming performance
How to Evaluate Existing Content
The key to assessing your past content is to study specific metrics, including:
Landing page traffic and total page views: Look at performance during the last quarter as well as throughout the full life of the piece. If there were historically strong traffic numbers that dissipated with time, try to find out why; was it due to a lack of promotion, shifting audience interests, or an evolving organic search landscape.
Engagement: The goal is to determine if readers responded well to the content by using KPIs like average-time-on-page, bounce rate, exit rate, generated leads, etc. A page that may receive minimal views but generates strong interactions is worth keeping (and an additional investment).
SEO rankings: Evaluate past and current ranking performance. Does the page show promise for terms for which it is under-optimized? Did it once have rankings that fell away? Ultimately, you want to determine if a page has untapped potential prior to deciding its fate.
One important factor to consider is how long a piece has been live at the time of your evaluation. If an article went live a month ago, it may have yet to reach its ceiling; if it has been live for a year, you can safely assume it won’t skyrocket in traffic without significant help.
Not all considerations are tied to measurable data. Be mindful of the following:
Duplicative content themes. Do you really need articles from 2018, 2019, 2021, and 2022 sharing similar best practices? No. Consider which version of the content theme receives the most traffic and the best interactions, and consider repurposing or junking the rest.
Overall brand representation. Brand voices naturally change over time, especially as new writers and marketers come aboard. Make sure that older pieces present a writing style that still aligns with your company’s persona, today.
Inbound links. Tools like Google Search Console reveal which third-party sites link to specific URLs. If a page receives significant off-site promotion, it’s worth keeping or amending rather than cutting.
Ideas for Reviving Content With Potential
When evaluating your content, past and present winners will bubble to the surface. Your goal for these is to maximize the potential of the newer pieces and revive the older ones. Ways to do this include:
Invest in supporting assets or design for pages with a strong view count. Let’s say, theoretically, you have an article that regularly receives page views. You’re guaranteed that any supplementary asset you develop will receive strong visibility, so think of ways you can improve the overall experience. Perhaps develop an explanatory video, a downable asset, or simply graphics of a higher calibre.
Promote content with strong engagement. Almost opposite of the above scenario, pages that deeply connect with the few customers that visit deserve more promotion. Add new internal links in prominent positions, share it across your social media, spotlight it within your newsletter, etc.
Revisit popular themes in new ways. I mentioned the downside of being too repetitive with your written content’s topics, but this doesn’t mean you can’t explore the same talking points across different mediums. For example, if your data suggests that users want to learn more about various types of accordions, you can build upon this theme with an illustrative graphic, comparative video, or even a podcast episode in which you invite a knowledgeable guest. These resources can either live or be linked to your existing article (and vice versa), resulting in a richer experience for visitors.
Add new value to content at least two years old and update the publication date. Some industries move faster than others but, for many, information from two or more years ago may be stale. This will discourage searchers from clicking it, even if the page still provides value. Therefore, tweak your content, expand upon certain points, add new paragraphs and graphics, and re-release it (with the same URL) for the current year. An added benefit of this exercise is that you can re-promote the piece on social media.
Consolidate duplicative pieces into a single, strong page. If you have four articles about what to bring to your tax accountant, why not pull segments from the three weaker posts and combine them with the fourth? With this single action, you strengthen your top contender while reducing the number of low-performing pages.
How to Make the Most of Content That Falters
For every winning page, you will inevitably come across duds that receive no traffic and/or poor interaction.
It may be tempting to leave underperforming content from five years ago live on your site. After all, who is it hurting? Well, for starters, such pieces may impair your SEO rankings. Google made clear that they view your site as a singular entity rather than independent URLs; a significant amount of thin pages can indirectly hurt the SEO potential of your newer, stronger pieces.
Additionally, underperforming URLs contribute to indexation bloat, a phrase used to describe a site that generates excess pages within search results. Redirecting or adding a noindex tag to these pages will create a more purposeful crawling experience for search engines, which often improves the rankings of the pages you keep live.
When given the choice, we suggest outright eliminating the piece. However, before you do, assess it like you would a rundown car; are there any parts that still have value? If yes, give these segments a new home within a newer (or refreshed) piece of content.
Final Words: Err on the Side of Caution
To throw out two beloved, applicable expressions . . . don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, and don’t leave before the miracle. In short, be painstaking when assessing your content’s potential and deciding which pieces to shave. Cut content recklessly, and you risk hurting your traffic numbers or missing opportunities.
Think of evaluating old content much like going to the salon; you’ll want to trim off the split ends (occasionally a few inches), and add layers and refreshed colour to keep your hair looking its best.
Ali Spiric, Marketing Manager at Allbound - Ali Spiric is the primary force behind cultivating Allbound’s voice as a leading thought leader in channel sales and partner management.