Building a credible, lasting SEO presence requires consistent effort. At the core of such effort is the creation of content – yet over time, many brands find themselves running head-first into their own form of writer’s block due to the sheer amount of content they create. Sooner or later, it can feel like you’ve written about every topic or angle there is to cover.

Yet some brands find new ways to circumvent these temporary obstacles in times of hardship. The re-purposing or reviving of older content into new offerings can provide a much needed boost to both your content offerings and your SEO. Whether you’re targeting individuals through email, social media or search engines, having new forms of content can generate meaningful benefits.

Today, we’ll examine some tips that can improve your SEO performance via updating or re-purposing older content for new and exciting purposes.

Look for Your Weaker Content

Generally speaking and in the world of SEO alike, the adage of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is very applicable. Tinkering with otherwise well-performing elements of your content strategy, redesigning websites or a variety of other technical alterations can significantly harm SEO outcome for a temporary period of time.

This is why looking for your pages and content offerings that have done poorly is the first key to improving SEO via updating content. If select pages are underperforming expectations for their given niche but your overall brand, blog or business is succeeding, then republishing or revising this content can be a boon for your optimization efforts.

Updating Content Effectively

Before you start pinging search engines with any update, it’s important to know what types of content updates generate the best results.

Most importantly, making sure your updated content aligns with search intent is crucial. If its previous version is not performing well, chances are that the content doesn’t match up well with what audiences in those targeted SERPs are looking for: this could be due to angle of coverage or content format.

Perhaps the simplest way to ensure your content aligns with search intent is to review the top-ranking pages in the SERP(s) you’re targeting. By seeing how they cover content and what formats they’re using, you can get a better idea of how to update your old content.

Time to Republish

Once you’ve assessed the content changes and deployed them accordingly, it then becomes time to start pinging search engines with your update. First, verify that any valuable backlinks in the old post are kept for maximum link juice, as removing these could cause the page to perform even worse for a time.

Next, replace all relevant content in your blog or content management solution, making sure to update the published date and any other time-sensitive elements within the content itself.

Given the major update, ensuring your content gets indexed as soon as possible is highly recommended. You can request an immediate reindexing of content via Google if you have setup its Search Console service.

Giving old content new life doesn’t have to be a pipe-dream: it can be a rewarding experience that bolsters your SEO potential! By following the above advice, you can make sure you’re only improving SEO potential while avoiding some of the more common pit-falls in republishing that all too often harm short-term SEO outcomes.