What Is Content Decay (How to Fix It): A Guide To Updating Old Posts

If you are a businessman who spends lots of effort and money on digital marketing to be always visible on the internet, you know for sure that content of all sorts reigns the process and how to update old content for SEO purposes. So, there is no need to emphasise the importance of updating old content SEO. Each piece of content on your website must be flawless and provide value to your target audience, no matter what measures are taken. In this blog, you will understand what is content decay and how to fix it. 

What is content decay?

We know the relevance of content, and somehow may not have heard about what content decay is in digital marketing.  Content decay happens on your website where the importance of the piece deteriorates, just like the decline in engagement and traffic. Content creation is a must-have. Over time, the high-performing content pieces receive little to no attention. That is where content decay happens, and measures need to be taken to update old content SEO. Content decay affects almost all long-form content you create, such as blogs, how-to guides, and articles.

 The blog post that gained lots of organic traffic may not be delivering the same traffic or more after some time due to decayed content. The decayed content causes a lot of demerits for search engine optimisation. Therefore, you need to immediately identify this catastrophe to attain steady SEO performance. 

Why perform SEO updating old content?

• Declined SERP ranks
• Decerement in conversions
• Decerement in registeting organic traffic.
• Higher bouncerate
• Overall decline in SEO performance

Possible reasons for content decay?

• Compelling content generated by competitors – To excel in the ever-changing landscape of digital marketing, you need to outperform your competitors in content creation. If they could provide actionable insights for the same keywords, your content may not rank higher on SERP pages.
• Outdated targeted keywords – The keywords used might not be evergreen; that means your target audience may not be searching such terms and keywords anymore. This often leads to content decay.
• Keyword cannibalization – Lack of fixing keyword cannibalization perplexes search engines and affects crawlability, and the same keyword targeting splits search traffic.
• Change in user intent – It is only a chance and happens sometimes. Your searcher’s intent on a specific topic may have changed over time, so the content once ranked slows down.
• Technological disruption – AI and AI-based systems reign in digital marketing and perhaps contribute to content decay.
• Recent Google algorithm updates – Search results and ranking for content significantly affected by recent Google updates. For instance, Content freshness SEO.

How to find Decayed Content?

Identification of decaying content that lacks content freshness requires a data-driven approach. It cannot be easily ascertained because we all forget to check content that once performed well on SERP. Piled-up decayed content robs your money and time, so the following three ways help you identify and formulate an SEO strategy for outdated content.

• Track content performance – Check your content against some metrics such as engagement and conversion to see it’s still worthwhile or has started to show signs of decay.

• Data-driven approach – As we have seen, use a paid SEO tool to analyse your website data and see if there is any irrelevant content remaining. For instance, an SEO content audit checklist with GA4.

• Go with fads – Sometimes, content decay comes as a result of a preferred marketing style that you no longer adhere to, or highly specific blog posts or articles lose high performance.

• Lack of a brand new angle or information – You can identify some content that needs a little tweak, or severe update, or a complete revamp.

So you get a fair idea of how to find decayed content on a website. How to fix content decay can be easily tackled with the right practices.

How to fix content decay?

An SEO strategy for outdated content always works for decayed content. To tackle the problem, refreshed and brand-new content creation helps. It helps you get a higher rank on search engines and conversions. 

• Updating older content to maintain relevance – Look for recent updates, statistics, images, videos, and expert opinions that you can include in content to make it authentic and user-relevant. Content must consider user search intent. This is how updating older content to maintain relevance works.

• Redirects for brand new content – If you remove any content entirely because of outdated information, you need to provide redirects to accentuate SEO efforts.

• Infographics, if available – If your content can incorporate infographics, you can try to include them for easy digestibility and readability of content.

• Internal linking – For updating old content SEO, you can strengthen the internal linking structure and avoid content decay to boost search engine relevance.

• Content audits – SEO updating old content is much easier for a content writer if you conduct a content audit to find out declining performance and outdated content.

• Out of the box angle- You need not worry about how to refresh old blog posts because all you need to do is add a new angle to the article or blog to drive traffic and desired attention.

• Help content gain traction – Some blogs or articles are of good quality but lack attention and traffic. So, what you can do is promote this piece through an internal linking strategy.

SEO Tools you can use for fixing content decay

Once you know what Causes Content Decay on a website, it is time to pick up tools to find out the aggregate of data and make necessary changes. These paid and free tools help you do that. 

• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• Ahrefs
• Semrush
• ScreamingFrog Spider

Attracting and retaining your target audience through content can be achieved continually if you implement an SEO strategy for outdated content optimization. It is best to always consider the Google freshness factor while SEO updating old content. You can craft compelling content while also looking for content decay to address issues on time. Data-driven insights and an audience-centric approach will help you. 

For the latest digital trends and insights, connect with GTECH — a trusted search engine optimization service provider based in Dubai, UAE