Instead of Incinerating Your Content Marketing Money Machines, Make Updates To Your Content

Outside of updating title tags, one of the easiest and most impactful ways to generate more traffic to your website is by simply updating existing page content.

Imagine missing out on hundreds or thousands of website visitors (and the leads and money that would follow) simply because you neglected your blog library?

I've often been surprised by how much of a traffic boost I get after updating an existing blog post or page. I'll add a few sentences to a blog post several years old, adding more depth and clarity, and then the traffic grows from this simple action.

And it could be simple for you, too. Here are some examples of the type of updates you could do.

• Improve the headline
• Optimize the title tag
• Update any outdated information
• Fix any broken links
• Add links to other pages on your site
• Fix any errors you may have missed
• Add a few sentences and up to multiple sections of written content to enrich the page
• Add subheadlines to break up long text
• Add imagery and graphics to make the content multimedia
• Link to other relevant blog posts and pages when you do the update. These internal links indicate to Google that the page you're page is important.

Often, you can simply spend 5-10 minutes making updates to your old page. And that will grow your website like few other actions. If you want a full list of recommendations, click here.

We spend all this time investing in content creation, and it's a tragedy that we neglect this content and throw all that time and money away. If you create and abandon, you have a huge opportunity. But, only after you see how the neglect has harmed your Google traffic.

The problem is often that the decline is slow and steady, and not rapid and obvious, so we let it die over time, and then panic when we need it to work for us again.

Maintain the Money Printing Machines: Why You Neglect Previously Published Content

If you've allowed your website content to slowly decay into oblivion, you've either lacked visibility on this decline, or you didn't have clarity on why the content was important to growing your business.

For example, it's great to get a blog post that draws a good amount of website visitors. But if those visitors don't do anything of value for your business, why would you maintain that content?

What we need to do is establish clear objectives that a page helps us accomplish. Not all of them have to be directly related to business income, but ideally, they should have some pathway towards growing the business (indirectly or directly).

• The blog could be designed to drive traffic to the page to get people to watch a video.
• The visitors could be directed towards signing up for an email list.
• It could be to click a link to buy a product or service.

If we get clear about how the content helps our business grow, we track it, and we maintain visibility on it, we'll ensure that it's not neglected.

Imagine having a money printing machine. If all you had to do was make sure the machine had paper and ink, you'd ensure that happened as effectively as possible so the money printing machines could run all day long every day.

So the disconnect seems to be that we don't see how the content we've created help print the money for our business. And that's something we need to rectify.

When you create a blog post, understand your objective for that post and how that objective helps grow your business. And if it's succeeding, keep it going. If that objective no longer serves your business, change the objective so it does, and rechannel that attention to what matters.

If you want help auditing your content library, reach out and let's explore working together.

If you'd like to do the work yourself, explore my SEO course about how to do the most effective task for driving more traffic from Google to your website.