Is it worth editing older blog posts for SEO purposes?
-
The title of the question asks it all.
One site I currently work on has a handful of blog posts that rank really well in the SERPS for certain "long-tail" searches. Would it be worth the time to, when I have it, to go back and edit the blogs little by little to help with SEO and building some links throughout the site to get people where we need them to go?
Basically "sprucing" up the blog posts to make them more readable, more engaging and help some link building efforts within the domain.
Thoughts?
-
If its the improvement of user experience - then the addition of relevant links is worth doing definitely, with respect to changing the content itself, I would be inclined to only make very minor edits and not disturb any of the long tail phrases you are ranking for.
-
Love this idea!
Thank you for sharing Geoff.
-
You could update the older posts (making sure the new internal links are not overly SEO'd) and then ask your programmer to turn off date display on all posts more than 3 months old. Users then arriving on the posts will not be bouncing because they see it as an "old" post and will benefit from your updated content.
-
"time and progression are always excellent reasons for new posts and new content"
Great point. I don't feel that the current blog posts are outdated as of yet and in need of a re-written post, they just aren't up to "snuff" for potential readers and visitors.
The main goal I have for editing these older posts is strictly for current user-experience. That is why I am battling the idea of going back to them, re-reading and making the minor edits needed to help or just leave it and write a new article, as you have mentioned.
-
Blog posts tend to be timely and topical and can date with time, (whereas articles (IMO) should be as timeless as possible and state fact). With blogging, situations change over time and so something written 6 months ago could be seen and viewed in a very different light - if that's the case, time for a new post, citing the changes and differences - resulting in both new (more well written) post, and a shiny new piece of content with links to the old post.
I find I might cover the exact same subject 3 or 4 times a year, writing a new post and citing the older ones shows consistency and awareness on your part for users, increases internal linking and subsequently increases the stickiness of your site.
Obviously if you have any glaring SEO errors or holes in your older posts it wouldn't hurt to patch them up - but time and progression are always excellent reasons for new posts and new content.
-
Thanks for the reply.
Our blog is only about 6 months old. The first 3 months or so of posts were really poorly written and I did not have the time to really "fine-tune" like I normally would. That job was left to someone doing the initial editing... Needless to say, looking back at them, they are really, really bad.
I'm not really interested in stuffing these older blogs with additional keywords or adding keyword rich anchor text in the posts.
The content was poorly written. We are getting a lot of traffic to our blog through some of these posts, but the bounce rate remains extremely high. The entry keyphrases seem to be "dead-on" for the content itself, at least for the most part. I won't lie, I would like to put a few links within some edited posts that would take someone to another page on the site that would be helpful or another blog.
Still not really sure what to...
-
I guess it really depends how old the "old posts" are.
If the posts are relatively recent, "sprucing" up the blog posts to make them more readable and more engaging is a possibility (and maybe a good idea if the original was not well written).
It might be better and more natural to write new posts on the topic which add value to the original butink back to the older posts as a point of reference. This should improve the positioning for the long tail on the old posts and is
I would not recommend transparent activity like going back to the old posts stuffing them full of keywords and a couple of keyword rich links to other parts of the site - Google will see you are trying to game the system and most likely discount any potential benefit.
-
Would it be worth the time to go back and edit the blogs little by little to help with SEO...
Sure, some people pay SEOs to do this very thing!
...and building some links throughout the site to get people where we need them to go? Basically "sprucing" up the blog posts to make them more readable, more engaging...
This is a great idea... that's the sign of a good webmaster.
....and help some link building efforts within the domain.
Yes, it will help. Great ideas. Good luck!
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does redirected traffic still contribute to SEO?
My company recently rebranded with a new website (and comparatively lower authority). We've built a bunch of backlinks for our old website, which now redirect to the new one, and I was wondering if these still contribute to SEO? Is there a difference in the SEO effect of a direct link versus a redirected one?
Link Building | | Russell_Chua0 -
Do links like this really help for SEO?
I was doing research with Moz's Link Explorer and one of our competitors had almost 50 links coming from sites like this. Mostly nofollow but we all know that today the nofollow can still help. My question is this: Will links like these help in any shape or matter. The reason I am asking is because Link Explorer is finding them, so I am sure Google will find them as well. Examples of sites: http://www.microlinkinc.com, http://www.cmolink.com The sites that I found via analyzing had DA 35-40 I don't want to share all urls but you get the point. Basically these sites are free keyword analyzing sites, once you put in a keyword they will bring up to 20 sites that rank for that keyword. And my research suggests that these pages stay and are crawl-able since Moz has crawled them. For example Moz says: date first seen 09/12/2018 so almost 6 months has passed but that result that was searched I am assuming has stayed. Would it make sense to search on such sites keywords that you know you are ranking for and then your site would be listed below and stay there for Google to crawl and another nofollow link in our link basket. Is my thinking correct or is it waste of time. Frankly it would take 2sec to run a search for each keyword. Any feedback and thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Davit
Link Building | | Davit19850 -
Backlink Transparency with SEO Agency
Hello everyone. I recently started working with an SEO agency and today they gave me an updated keyword report which showed some increase in rankings. I was not aware that any backlinks had been created yet so I asked for a report of the links. Their response is below and I am just wondering if this is normal practice being I have not worked with any type of SEO agency yet. "
Link Building | | wonderd24
Hey Daniel, We release a small report on them which the guest blog team will do soon. We don't reveal all backlink sources unfortunately because people have tried to bother the webmasters we have and basically steal our techniques. But rest assured you will be ranking at the top of the pack with our methods 😃
"1 -
Backlink Building - is it worth it?
I've got a UK-based site with about 10,000 backlinks, according to majestic, and just 4 according to Open Site Explorer? Confusing! Rivals tend to have more - 28,000 in the case of our nearest competitors. So I'm not sure the best way to go about building backlinks? Or if it's worth actively seeking to build them? The index page of the site has a Moz PA of 45 (DA = 35) and I'm looking for any ways to increase these - need to get the DA up to 73 to compete with largest rivals. One of our main rivals has about 60 .edu links - would be great to emulate that, but I'm also not sure how you go about this? i.e. when you spot a good backlink someone else has, how would you begin the process of also getting that link?
Link Building | | abisti20 -
Basic SEO question
Hi! One of my clients, a Chiropractic clinic, has a lot of unique content in norwegian. Problem is; we still have problems building backlinks here in norway. Is one possibility to translate this content to another language and try to get backlinks this way? Would a backlink from another country have the same value as a "local" one? If translating the content is an option how would I go about spreading this content? Is outsourcing an option? Cheers!
Link Building | | AleksanderOlsen0 -
Off page SEO
Our off-page SEO efforts include the following minimum on a monthly basis. Can anyone help with the relative merits of these, which are useful, which aren't and whether for instance you would substitute more of one for less of another? On a per month basis 7 social bookmarks 30 Website directory submissions 4 guest blog posts 3 press releases 8 blog posts (on 2 dedicated wordpress blogs) 4 articles published in high ranking article directories 3 social profile with links/blog comments on .edu/.gov with links/classified ad links 1 slideshare presentation with links Many thanks in advance.
Link Building | | TheKewlShop0 -
How important are directory submissions to my off-page SEO?
Hi Guys, One area of my link building that I carry out is looking for online directories and social bookmarking websites to submit my website to. I do this in order to gain some backlinks to my website. What I want to know is are they really worth my time, and if so, which types would you say are the most important? I have obviously been through many directory lists, both on SEOmoz and on other websites, and also performed various searches to find relevant directories to my website. I just feel that posting up a link that lies deep in a directory online that, more often than not, have very low PA and lots of outbound links will offer very little in terms of SEO. If anything, this could really bring down the quality of my links and be detrimental to my website, right? This is a subject that I have been thinking about for a while and especially with the recent algorithm update from Google and the attack on many web directories that are, lets say, 'not playing by the rules', I'm worried that this will have a negative impact for my website. Let me know your thoughts guys and if you have any tips on how to get higher quality links from these kind of submission then I'm all ears! Matt.
Link Building | | MatthewBarby0 -
Best Blog Search Engine
What's the best way to find blogs? Any search engine or blog catalog you recommend? I"m trying to find blogs with specific topics/articles.
Link Building | | SoulSurfer80