Digital Upcycling: How to Resurrect Dead Content

For years and years now we’ve heard that ‘content is King’. Marketing departments have invested exponential amounts of money on digital content. And with good reason; it works for the most part.

But a lot of the time, for various reasons, it doesn’t.

Contents:

• Inefficient content: the statistics
• Why it’s best to work with what you’ve already got
• What content should you choose?
• Content CRO: How to resurrect dead content
• Now start creating!
• Want to learn more?

Inefficient content: the statistics

Simply throwing money at content doesn’t mean it’ll work. We must be strategic, and often we find that means using the content clients have created years back and forgotten.

First, I’ll take a look at why you should work with what’s already on your site and then I’ll unpack some methods to make your content come to life.

Why it’s best to work with what you’ve already got

1. Your old content has trust and will be generating visits
2. Your old content could be doing more harm than good
3. Your old content is often where the ideas are
4. Your old content provides insights into your users
5. Your old content makes you very efficient

Your old content has trust and will be generating visits

Pages, like domains, have built up years of trust from search engines. What’s more, there’s every chance that your content will have picked up other ranking factors that generate trust:

Your old content could be doing more harm than good

Out-of-date, below-par content can negatively affect a site. If people visit a blog, written in 2009, and find that it’s peddling irrelevant information, then that doesn’t reflect well on the brand.

If your pages have unhealthy Analytics stats, or if you compare unfavourably to other competitors, then the page, and your domain, will be adversely affected in search rankings.

Therefore, instead of creating new content, it makes sense to update and improve content that could be turning people off your brand. And if you update a page to make it more engaging and users respond with better analytics information, we find that you’ll see a positive difference in your search rankings.

Your old content is often where the ideas are

While ideas generation can be almost infinite, there are a limited amount of ‘evergreen’ content ideas that your brand can create. The best, most customer-focused, concepts could have been dreamed up and published years ago.

Which isn’t to say that the actual content is any good, but the idea is already there.

Your old content provides insights into your users

Depending on the type of brand you are, and the industry you ply your trade in, users react in different ways.

Analysing old content allows marketers to ascertain how users behave and engage with specific messages, designs and calls to action. This lets you know, ahead of you repurposing the piece, what’s effective and what’s not.

Looking at your old content, you get to see:

Your old content makes you very efficient

Fast results. It’s what we all want – something to impress our boss with. It’s true that working in marketing means we’re always espousing the long game, but improving existing blog content is one of the speediest quick wins out there.

We’ve already seen that the ‘throw enough turd at the wall’ nature of content marketing means that wastage can be high. But there’s no wastage in updating existing content because it forces us to be completely strategic.

While there’s the temptation to create anything when writing new content purely for the point of being ‘new’, updating old stuff forces us to think about the page:

• What is it?
• What’s the point of it?
• Where should it take users?
• What people are clicking on it?
• What should it look like?

What content should you choose?

OK, OK, so we’ve established it’s often better to use the content that’s already live on your site. But how do we identify which content to work with?

Consult your brand: what’s being pushed?

What’s hot right now in your business?

Depending on the comings and goings in your office, and seasonal peaks in demands, you’ll know best what’s being promoted by your brand in the next 3-6 months. And if you have old, relevant content stinking the place up that ties into these trends then it makes sense to revive it.

Consult Analytics: What’s getting traffic?

Simply logging into your Google Analytics account informs which content you should be paying most attention to. Navigate like thus:

Visit Behaviour -> Site Content -> Landing Pages -> (search for blog URL)

From here you can see which blogs are bringing in traffic, and so which are the highest priority to update. And by segmenting your traffic to only include organic users, you can discover which blogs are bringing in a steady stream of traffic from Google.

You can sort by:

• Bounce rate
• Exit rate
• Session duration
• Pages per session

And see which pages are performing particularly poorly. Then you can start thinking about how to make them better.

Consult Google Search Console: what’s getting clicks?

While Google Analytics is a valuable resource to ascertain which of your old blogs are enjoying traffic, Google’s Search Console (previously known as Webmaster Tools) shows you where your content is showing up in search results yet isn’t ‘quite’ bringing traffic in.

Visit Search Console and then click:

Search Traffic ->

Search Analytics ->

Pages (filtered by) blog URL

This shows which content is showing up in search results. Of course, you’ll recognise some blogs from Analytics which are bringing in traffic (these are represented by the ‘Clicks’ column and are usually accompanied by a decent amount of impressions), but you’ll also see some with a small click through rate (<2%) that are slipping through the net.

The ‘Impressions’ column shows that your content is showing up somewhere in search results, getting your meta information seen by users. But if the click-through rates are low, then content isn’t quite high enough in search rankings – or relevant enough to users – in order to generate decent organic traffic to your website.

That’s when you know that a little leg up can do your ailing blog the world of good.

Content CRO: How to resurrect dead content

Understand what’s wrong

Before we can do anything, we have to work out what’s wrong with the page.

After all, if we don’t know why it’s not working, we can’t make the right changes and we can’t take a look at the right metrics to work out if it’s changing.

• Is the bounce rate too big? If so you need to make the page look better and link more effectively to other pages.
• Are session durations low? Then write more or take users to other parts of the site.
• Are users not going to targeted places? Your calls to action aren’t much cop.
• Is the content wrong? Quite easy, this one. Update it!
• Is traffic too low? Look into ways that you can get more eyes on the content in the first place.

Earn rankings: improve the content

If your content is failing to engage users, or search engines, then it’s not relevant enough or special enough. So we need to make it better than anyone else. Sounds simple, right?

This Moz whiteboard, Why Good Unique Content Needs to Die, encapsulates my feelings entirely.

Our content needs to be better than anyone else, with:

• More detail
• Stronger research
• More incisive analysis
• Exclusive imagery
• Better writing

…than its search rivals. If it’s not, then do something else. It doesn’t matter what our content’s USP is, but it needs to be there.

Detail is hugely important; however, longer isn’t always better.

Ahrefs has stated that generally speaking, the more backlinks a page has, the more traffic it gets from Google.

It also claims there is a strong correlation between word count and backlinks, but only up to 1,000 word point.

When blogs reach thousands of words in length, the correlation turns negative.

A similar trend can be seen with the correlation between word count and organic traffic. Quality and detail are important, up to around the 2,000 word mark…

…after 2,000 words, traffic metrics decline.

So, how long is the perfect blog post. Well, we think SEMrush sums this up well:

Your decision on the length of your blog post should primarily depend on the search intent.

That is, you should provide the blog post length that best serves your audience’s needs.

Your main objective is to answer your audience’s questions. This means investing time to understand them and the amount of information they need.

Show authority with EAT… experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness… E.E.A.T

In 2019, Google released its core Medic (E.A.T) algorithm update and added ‘experience’ to the quality guidelines in December. Google introduced E.E.A.T in a bid to only serve the best quality content in search results. So, if you’re looking to improve your content, these guidelines are a great place to start.

This is especially important if you work in an industry where misinformation can change a person’s life, such as medicine or law. Google stated that ‘pages that are created with no attempt to help users, or pages that potentially spread hate, cause harm, or misinform or deceive users, should receive the lowest rating.’

To comply with E.E.A.T:

• Content should be detailed and thorough, as well as fully-referenced.
• Content should be written by experienced individuals and feature author bios.
• Content should be up-to-date with no errors.
• A website should have case studies, and clear customer service information.

Slash bounce rates: improve the aesthetics

People are fickle. If they’re not responding to your blog then it could just be because it looks bad. After all, 65% learn visually.

• Add in images. These act as a subconscious trust signal and make it easier to process text. And if they relate to your article then they’ll immerse the reader in the piece. Great images are also incredibly sharable – increasing the chances that your blog will get published on social networks and get more eyes on your blog.
• Use social. Of course, imagery doesn’t have to be pictures. Embed relevant Tweets, Facebook posts, Instagram images, YouTube videos. This is a major trust signal.
• Improve white space. A study, Lin. 2004, found that improving white space between paragraphs and in left and right margins increased comprehension by 20%. So, use headings, frequent paragraphs, larger fonts and images.

Share it and boost visits: Write for (and including) influencers

A lot of content doesn’t die because users hate it, or because the writer is a berk with a stupid moustache, it shuffles off this mortal coil because people simply don’t know it exists.

So when you’re writing, try to include relevant social influencers – and then let them know about it:

• Email them
• Tweet them
• Send them a nice letter

At the very least you’re telling a relevant person that your content exists. In a best-case scenario they’ll share it with their social connections, drive traffic to your site and link to your domain.

Also, make sure to share content on your own social media channels.

Increase click-through rates: optimise your content

When your old content was scribed, there’s every possibility it wasn’t done so with search intent in mind. So, do a little keyword research around it and ensure it’s well-optimised.

Play around with relevant search terms that arise in your content into Google’s Keyword Planner, or Ubersuggest, to see what you could adorn your blog with.

We’ve already read that Search Console highlights those blogs that are nearly bringing in the bacon. If we’re able to tweak meta titles, meta descriptions, headers and body content with the terms it highlights, there’s every possibility we’ll see a growth in search rankings, and improved organic traffic.

Increase visit durations: include calls to action

It’s really common for me to come across old, decent client content that looks good, is well-researched, well-written, optimised well and ranks well for specific longtail keywords. Which is great! But it’s often doing nothing long term – bounce rates are high and the business isn’t getting anything directly out of it.

That’s often because blogs aren’t utilising calls to action effectively enough. Blogs might have some relevant content that people would like, but they’re just not letting people know about it. So, we need to direct users clearly, in image-based and text-based links. Let users be in no two minds about where you want them to go next.

Convert users: master the funnel

So much of the success of your content depends on the strategy behind it. Millions of pounds of content is wasted because it’s irrelevant or not part of a greater plan.

That’s where the content funnel comes in.  The funnel recognises that different types of content exist for different reasons and helps us to show users where they want to go next.

For instance, someone who visits your site to read an infographic may be interested in a relevant case study or white paper. Likewise, a reader who enjoys your content may follow or like on social platforms.

Both of these actions cause personas to become more invested with a brand; making sales or conversions more likely in the future.

Of course, users aren’t always ready to go to a more sales-focused point. They might be happy where they are in Uncommitmentville, so you need to give them something they want before they leave the site. Clear links both across and down the content funnel are essential.

Now start creating!

The funnel also works the other way: if you find that you’ve some strong content that sits slightly further down towards a point of conversion but isn’t enjoying any decent traffic, you might need to create less sales-focused blogs. These can attract users and bring traffic to your site, while imploring them to visit your more detailed content.

And if you have lots of unfocused ‘top-funnel’ blogs on your site that are bringing traffic but not converting, then creating relevant, slightly more sales-focused content will bring users closer to a point where they become customers.

This way you’re creating content for a reason, as part of a strategy. And you’re not part of the billion dollar problem.

Want to learn more?

Content upcycling is a big topic, and we could talk about it for hours. So, if you’ve a bank of old content on your website and aren’t sure what to do with it, before you press ‘delete’, get in touch with our team of content marketers. We can run a full audit, let you know what’s working and what isn’t, and help guide you on how to make the most of what you’ve already got.