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Fix Outdated Content To Boost Your SEO Results

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If your organization has been around for more than a year or two, your website probably holds a mountain of published content. Much of that content no longer helps your audience or your brand because it’s outdated or irrelevant.

But it doesn’t hurt anything, right?

Wrong. Old content may negatively impact your content’s search rankings and visitors’ experience.

For example, published content might link to articles, research reports, or other useful web pages. Over time, pages move offline for one reason or another. Those links might now go to defunct pages. That hurts your search performance because Google frowns on content with broken links. And audiences don’t love them, either.

You also might have content about topics that don’t fit your current content or business strategy. You wouldn’t want those pages to turn up in search.

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Many brands hesitate to delete content, but the results are often surprisingly positive. For instance, HubSpot deleted more than 3000 outdated content pieces. In a matter of months, the company saw an improvement in its SEO results.

Many marketers hesitate to delete old #content, but the results of doing so can be worth it, says @Fintech_LeeLi via @CMIContent. #ContentMarketing #SEO Click To Tweet

Start with a content audit

HubSpot’s experience doesn’t mean you can or should delete all your old content. You can improve much of your previously posted content to improve your SEO and audience experience.

Luckily, there are many ways you can improve previously posted content to improve your SEO. Even better, properly refurbished or updated content can serve you just as well as new posts. For example, according to Search Engine Journal, your site might see more page traffic and better SEO by deleting or refurbishing old content every so often. By practicing these strategies, you could save your brand money in the long run.

If you’re going to take some digital scissors to inaccurate or outdated content, you’ll need to find it first. That means you’ll need to audit your content. Ideally, you’ll review every piece of content on your site (blog posts, tutorials, or interview posts) to see what works and what no longer provides authority boosting or informative benefits to your target audience. If the amount of content makes that task too daunting, start with one content category (blog posts, for example), then expand from there.

Delete or redirect content that’s:

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  • No longer relevant because of changing industry trends or changes in your business
  • Not of use to your current target audience

The content you decide to keep may benefit from the SEO boosting techniques below.

Let go of #Content that’s no longer relevant to the audience you desire, says @Fintech_LeeLi. You may see an #SEO boost via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

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Update and republish good but old content

What to do with the old blog posts and other accurate and worthwhile content pieces you want to keep? Google loves recently published content– so republish them.

But don’t repost them on your site as is – that’s a fast way to earn a rankings penalty in the computerized eyes of Google’s search engine algorithm.

Instead, refresh the article by:

  • Adding new paragraphs
  • Updating existing ones
  • Adding new links and visuals

Then, republish your quality content with the current date. Databox, a popular dashboard tool for businesses, saw a 75% increase in website traffic after updating more than 20 old blog posts.

Look for the following opportunities as you work on updating older content.

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Delete references to outdated stats in the content you’re keeping

Comb through reasonably good and accurate posts. Edit out any inaccurate data points or outdated references they may contain.

Say you have an excellent blog post for your small business on how to use a specific product. The article remains relevant but includes data points from five years ago. Do your brand a favor by removing those sentences.

Doing so prevents your content from suffering due to broken links. It also prevents your target audience from reading outdated information, then coming to incorrect conclusions about your brand’s authority or authenticity.

After getting rid of these outdated references or data points, you can boost the SEO value of previously published pages by replacing those old data points with current ones.

Go hunting online for modern, accurate, up-to-date references to replace each removed link. This guarantees that your links aren’t broken and that they link to authoritative sources.

Remember to review and refresh evergreen posts, too

Similarly, read through evergreen posts for references that aren’t accurate or compelling any longer. Consider the current industry, its trends, and what your target audience is searching for.

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Then put on your editor’s hat and get to work. Trim the fat from old content, add new sentences with new insights, and more without touching the bones of previously published pieces. You’ll spend less time doing this than if you created new content while improving your brand’s SEO.

Weave in new SEO keywords and links

Lastly, you can update old content and improve its search engine optimization value by weaving in freshly researched SEO keywords and links.

If you’re still posting new content regularly as part of your content strategy, you can take the keyword research you’ve already done and use it to spruce up old content. Swap out or add new keywords to old posts, and consider placing a few fresh, high authority links within old blogs to make them more relevant and more authoritative than before.

Swap out or add new keywords to existing #content to make it more relevant and authoritative, says @Fintech_LeeLi via @CMIContent. #SEO Click To Tweet

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Wrap Up

Cleaning up old content and making it relevant to your target audience once again takes work. But getting rid of content that no longer works and updating what does can do wonders for your content marketing strategy.

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You may improve organic traffic to your site without investing in fresh content, and you’ll better serve your audience’s needs. Try these strategies for yourself and see the results.

Want more content marketing tips, insights, and examples? Subscribe to workday or weekly emails from CMI.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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