Do you have a ton of old content on your website?

Are you struggling to see results from your SEO efforts?

When was the last time you audited your content?

The key to great SEO is quality content. If your website has been around for a long time, you probably have a wealth of content—but contrary to common SEO advice, more content is not always better. If your website is bogged down by old, irrelevant, or repeated content, it may actually hurt your rankings. Overused content and keywords can cause your webpages to compete with each other rather than other websites; and old, low-traffic content can be dead weight to your SEO.

Cleaning up your content can help boost your rankings. The main components of content maintenance are auditing, prioritizing, and distinguishing between evergreen and time-sensitive content.

Audit and Prioritize

When was the last time you ran an SEO audit? 

An audit is the most comprehensive way to check how well your content is performing. Running an audit can help you find bad links, orphan pages, missing meta text, unoptimized URLs, and more. Auditing can also tell you about the traffic on each webpage. You can clean up your website by cutting down on low-traffic content and prioritizing high-traffic content.

You can also prioritize content by consolidating similar pages. The Search Engine Journal says “consolidating pages that cover similar topics into one comprehensive page can improve user experience and help avoid keyword cannibalization.” Keyword cannibalization is when your website has multiple ranked pages with the same keyword, and they are forced to compete with each other rather than other websites.

Cutting down on repeated and outdated content takes the dead weight off your website and makes it easier for the important pages to rise through the ranks.

Evergreen vs Time-Sensitive

Evergreen content is always relevant to your business and brings in steady traffic. Time-sensitive content is relevant to your business, but may only be relevant for a short period of time. You can clean up your website by updating or repurposing evergreen content over time and evaluating time-sensitive content to see if it can be removed. Removing old, time-sensitive content is another way to help avoid keyword cannibalization. It helps boost your ranking by making way for fresh time-sensitive content.

Boost Your Content with Online Marketing in Ann Arbor, Michigan

Overwhelmed by the prospect of doing a complete audit?

It’s time to turn over your SEO to a professional!

Michigan SEO Group offers online marketing in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We can take the burden of website maintenance and SEO off your shoulders, and our traditional SEO methods keep your content fresh and relevant. If you want help getting your business to page one of Google, call (877) 815-6974 or submit a contact form here.