How to Fix Existing Content and Make It More SEO-Friendly

Web content, even the evergreen ones, can “deteriorate” over time. Because we live in an ever-changing world, you cannot expect things around you to remain the same. This is why it’s always good practice to fix existing content to ensure they remain relevant, accurate, and SEO-friendly. 

Have you written an extensive case study for your recruitment site before? Or perhaps it has been quite some time since you updated that guide you wrote about passing job interviews. Whatever the case may be, it’s time to revisit your old web content and give it a much-needed makeover. 

Breathing New Life to Your Old Recruitment Content

Here are a few tips from us here at Recruitment Traffic to ensure that you’ll get the best possible results when refurbishing old content. 

1. Perform a content audit and get rid of low-quality content

The first thing you need to do is conduct a content audit and identify duplicate, thin, or low-quality posts. Anything that doesn’t rank or add value to your site should go to make way for better and more updated content pieces. Otherwise, they could hurt your site’s SEO and authority. 

2. Identify content that needs a makeover

After eliminating all the non-performing articles on your site, the next step is to identify underperforming posts. Underperforming articles are those that are on the first page of Google but aren’t included in the top five search results. Since these articles are just within striking distance of the top five search results, which attract the most clicks, tweaking them a little can do wonders to their performance. 

You can use Google Search Console to pinpoint the web content that requires improvement. Alternatively, you can utilise Google Analytics to identify the articles that experienced a drop in traffic over time. 

3. Refurbish outdated information

Updating old content with new information is one of the easiest and most effective ways to keep it relevant and SEO-friendly. Therefore, go over your existing articles and see if you need to add new information to them. Conduct some research once more. Check other sources and compare them with your articles to see how much new information you need to add to your existing content. 

4. Update images

Web users are likely to leave your site if they see anything that would indicate they are perusing old content. This includes web images. Therefore, besides the text of your articles, it’s also a good idea to update the pictures to give old content a fresh look. 

For example, if you’ve written a piece about a prominent figure in the recruitment industry, it would be wise to secure a newer photo of that person. This will give your audience the impression that your content is something new. Also, make sure that your images have alt tags to make them more SEO-friendly. 

5. Make your content more comprehensive

You might also want to consider “fattening up” your old posts to fix existing content. Perhaps your old articles didn’t rank well because they failed to cover all the vital aspects of a specific issue. If this is the case, follow the steps below: 

• Check the search results for specific keywords that rank higher than your content.
• See what they have that you don’t. Start adding details to your old content to make it more comprehensive.
• You should also check online forums and comments under similar articles. Find out what people are asking about the topic.
• Update your content by providing answers to these questions. 

6. Identify and solve keyword cannibalisation issues

Keyword cannibalisation occurs when two or more web pages on your site target the same keyword. This results in one page affecting the others’ performance and preventing them from ranking well. 

To detect cannibalisations issues, launch your Google Search Console and go to the performance report. There you will see a list of queries that have provided your site with clicks and impressions. Click on one of these queries and you’ll see a list of URLs that are ranking for it. If you see more than one URL, your site is experiencing keyword cannibalisation. 

Setting up 301 redirects will help you fix existing content suffering from keyword cannibalisation. First, identify the strongest page that is “cannibalising” the others. Then, remove the other pages and 301 redirect their URLs to the remaining page. Don’t forget to update the internal links pointing to the pages you removed. 

Refurbish Your Old Content

You don’t need to create new web content all the time if you want to keep your recruitment site updated. You can simply refurbish existing content to keep it fresh and make it more valuable and SEO-friendly. Consider the pointers above to get the results you’re expecting. 

If you need help giving old content a makeover, we at Recruitment Traffic can assist you. We offer award-winning SEO services to help recruitment agencies like yours make the most of the opportunities search engines can provide. Please speak with us today!