Blog posts updating is a really important SEO technique that I want to share today. In any blog that’s been around for awhile, there’s going to be a lot of old posts. Take this blog for example. We have over 250 blog posts that go back to our company foundation in 2013.
An awesome SEO technique I want to show today focuses on updating those blog posts with modern relevant information. The reason to do this is that Google cares very much about serving up the most relevant modern data for their search engine. When they see a blog post on a website that is 7 years old, they pretty much don’t count it.
What Google Wants
Google figures that whatever information was important back then is most likely not that important now. So how do we get Google to consider our old content still important? We need to update it! Updating blog posts on the website can be a very simple process of adding a new paragraph or two and possibly tweaking some of the settings if you’re using SEO Yoast.
Using SEO Yoast
I recommend going through and updating the readability and the SEO keyword feature to green. If you can make it green that is best or at least aim for yellow. SEO Yoast has many different ranking factors based on how well the SEO on the page has been completed.
Green is the best and it’s something to really strive for. Almost 98% of our blog posts are in the green, but there are some that still have a readability score that is low. This week I’ve been focusing on updating the readability scores for these old blog posts from 2013.
It is a really important SEO technique and one that many competitors will not be thinking about. It can be very beneficial to go back and add a timestamp that shows when the update is made. For example, for updating blog posts today put May 22nd 2020 above the updated content.
What are you doing to update the SEO results of your old content? I highly encourage you revisit this while also adding new fresh content. This is the best way to stay relevant on the search engines and it is really the best way to beat your competition in search.
Have more questions about how to do SEO on your website? Wondering how to run SEO Yoast properly? Hit me up on my contact page!
Read next: Perfect Blog Post Recipe
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!
Leave a Reply
Customer Support
____________________________________________ Looking for SEO in Billings, MT? Ask us why we are the secret ingredient to your business ranking #1
SEARCH OPTIMIZATION
____________________________________________ Looking for SEO in Billings, MT? Ask us why we are the secret ingredient to your business ranking #1
SEARCH OPTIMIZATION
So just by editing some text/adding new text on a post, and clicking update, this updates the timestamp on the Internet and the post’s date will be updated? Sorry, this just confuses me!
It needs to be the timestamp meta code included in the recent HTML5 release:
Is this something that you have to go in and edit manually in the code? Thanks.
Not necessarily. The article is about updating the content of the article for better SEO
I’ve seen some sites that have blog posts from 4 – 5 years ago (when they first posted) but they updated their posts and now they are showing up very high in search results. Gives me hope that I can get some of my older posts to rank well.
Yes, updating old posts is a great way to rank higher in search results. The more Google sees the website has a steady flow of new information, the more they want to share the site with their users on the World’s most popular search engine.
How many words do you recommend in a blog post? I’ve read that 350 – 500 words in the minimum for Google, but some say 750 – 1000 is ideal. Would love your thoughts on this.
Yes, 300 is the minimum but it is much better to go long form on really important topics to the website (ones you are trying to SEO). Actually, the #1 keyword should have a 5,000 word article about it on the site somewhere. Great question!
I’ve noticed in the last few years that more recent sites come up in search results than in previous years when I would search for a term and I’d have 10+ year old posts come up. I am glad to Google is keeping the search results updated, it’s very important as things are changing as we speak!
Making sure that content is current and relevant is a major job on the internet. History repeats itself and therefore there are going to be a lot of overlapping ideas on the web, and it is up to search engines like Google to figure out how to serve up the most current and relevant results.
I like to add photos and some additional text to my older posts at times to update them, and I think it’s helped our SEO.
It certainly does, Lori! Google loves updated posts as it shows the site owner cares about having the most relevant and modern information.