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Understanding Content Re-Optimisation for SEO
Ilya Nasedkin • 21 January 2020
Content re-optimisation is one of those phrases that keeps popping up in SEO
It’s likely something you’ve come across yourself but perhaps not a concept that has ever really been explained to you or been justified as a worthwhile activity.
In a nutshell, content re-optimisation for SEO is the action of going back through existing pages of your website (including blogs, articles and white papers) and adjusting and re-writing the content in an attempt to improve your organic search rankings. This is in contrast to the standard practice of adding new content or continuing to build your off-site link profile.
Why should I do it?
There are many reasons a business may look at their site and choose to engage in content re-optimisation rather than simply adding new content. One of the simplest and probably most common explanations would be that the SEO strategy or target keywords may have changed. It could be that the process may have thrown up some interesting findings as to which keywords are most valuable. As such the emphasis has shifted and the new content strategy reflects new keywords and phrases.
In this case it will likely make sense to look at existing high ranking pages and adjust them rather than simply trying to add new pages of content. Particularly for sites effectively using a pillar and cluster strategy to highlight the SEO prominence of certain core pages.
Another well documented reason to revisit your current content before adding new is for the purpose of keeping it fresh in the eyes of search engines like Google and up to date and relevant for your visitors. This shows the search engines that as well as new content, you are always improving the content you have. There has been research pieces conducted by various SEO businesses and tools that show engines can favourably increase rankings for pages that have been freshly indexed versus simply being left stagnant for long periods of time.
With the above in mind though, it is important to note that re-optimising content for core pillar pages too often may actually be detrimental so do be careful here. Working on building fresh backlinks for pages like this may also help if you’ve already recently re-optimised the on-site content.
How do I do it?
Whilst there are multiple approaches you could take; in a broad sense the intention is to increase the depth and breadth in which you cover a given topic relating to your target keyword for a given page.
In almost all instances you’re going to want to come away with more content than you had before your optimisation. Look at adding a new sub heading to increase the content capacity while keeping it closely relevant to the existing copy. Meanwhile maintain vigilance that you don’t want to duplicate copy from other pages and the copy you add still needs to have a value to the user as well as the engines. It could be that new research has emerged that could help you flesh out your topic or, update older stats and analysis that is now out of date.
Your role is to improve and focus, not necessarily completely re-write the existing copy. Also be very careful adjusting titles and heading that exist on the page currently. You don’t want to lose the ranking power you already have, you want to add to it.
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