Content and how we interact with it is always changing. The content you produced for your website four years ago might not live up to current standards and reader expectations. Ensuring your content is updated will give your readers what they want and keep them coming back for more.
So how do you keep your site and its content up-to-date?
Update Statistics and Laws
Nothing screams outdated like statistics from 10 years ago or an old version of a law that has since changed. If a new law passes or an old one receives an update, change that information on any pages that mention it.
Pro-tips: Set up Google alerts for news related to the area of law your firm practices. This way you’ll never miss any updates.
Sign up for emails from websites that issue statistical reports that you use in your content. You will receive an email with the following year’s statistics.
Ensure Your Content Works on Any Medium
If you haven’t updated a page since 2013, chances are that page isn’t optimized for viewing on modern phones or tablets.
Enhancing the mobile responsiveness of your content not only elevates the user experience for readers but also boosts your SEO ranking, especially with the imminent launch of Google’s mobile-first index. Upon its rollout, Google will prioritize mobile page functionality in its rankings, shifting from the current desktop-page-based rankings, thereby making mobile optimization crucial for SEO.
Reformat the Page
Did you follow web writing best practices when creating your content? If not, have no fear. You can change your page to follow those best practices. Here are a couple tips:
- Reorganize the page so it follows the inverted pyramid: You should always follow the inverted pyramid when you write your content. It makes for a better experience by addressing your reader’s needs immediately. If you ask a question in your page title or article heading, answer it immediately. If a page you wrote a year ago has a long, unwieldy intro, consider cutting it down so it gets right into the topic.
- Use bullet lists, bold phrases, shorter paragraphs: Look for opportunities to change lengthy paragraphs into bullet lists. Bold important information to draw the reader’s eye. And make your sentences and paragraphs more concise; long paragraphs can be intimidating to readers.
Revisit the Page and Read in the Modern Context
Is your copy still relevant? Does it still reflect your brand, product, or service? Your business, the market, and even society might have shifted since you last updated your website. So, your content might be saying things or making promises that don’t really match up with what your business does now.
Include News and Updates
Update your site with the latest news to keep it fresh. For example, if you are a product liability law firm, update pages on specific mass torts or class actions with news about the pending litigation. It can also help keep your page high in Google search results.
Google uses “freshness” as a factor when ranking pages. If you update your content with useful information, it might boost your rankings. Making your page longer by adding news updates may help your page rank for more keywords too.
Add Internal Links
If you’ve written content on something you mention in one of your older pages, link to it. For example, if you wrote page A in 2012, but then in 2014 published pages B, C, and D, you can go back and make sure you have internal links where appropriate.
Internal links keep the reader on your site longer and gives them a better experience by providing more information. Internal links also help Google determine “hierarchy on your site,” according to Yoast.
Consider this: you have a home page (let’s call this Page A), and three pages that branch off that page (Pages B, C, and D). Pages B, C, and D each have pages that branch off of them (B1, B2, C1, C2, D1, and D2) and so on. The deeper your site gets (the more content you have on it), the more difficult it becomes for Google to find your deep content.
That’s where internal links come in. These links tell Google, “Hey, there’s some important content over here that you should rank and readers should see.”
How Do I Know Whether I Should I Update My Content or Just Delete It Entirely?
In most cases, you don’t want to delete your pages. Take it from Jordan Kasteler, SEO Director of Hennessey Consulting, “Google judges a webpage based on its content. Imagine you get rid of some old content on your website. Now, Google has to look at your site again and might place it differently in search results based on the new content you added. Basically, Google doesn’t remember the old keywords you used and just add the new ones when you change things up. It’s definitely not recommended.”
He explains further, “Updating old content is highly recommended. It adds new keywords, new text and satisfies Google’s algorithm called “QDF” (Query Deserves Freshness) by keeping the page fresh which Google looks at for ranking some pages.”
So, in almost every case, you will want to use the tips content above to freshen up your content rather than scrapping it.
However, if you end up deleting the page and writing a new one, check out our guide to writing the perfect blog post.
For fresh, up-to-date content, give us a call today: 888-521-3880.
