Recycling and repurposing content has been a major trend in 2019, especially for web copy and articles that are underperforming. Stagnant content is defined as copy that is no longer serving its intended purpose or providing complete marketing value. How do you go about updating this content to make it relevant again? Here are four tips.
Consider audience needs
Content that you created months or even years ago may no longer meet the needs of audiences. It can become dated and disjointed, which leads to lower levels of engagement, a drop off in social shares and less traffic. Don’t despair though, if you have seen the warning signs, then take a closer look at the people who are reading or watching your content. You can then update it via content title changes or reworded prose to make it more relevant, and run a fresh promotion campaign to revised audiences.
Improve technical elements
Content may also be underperforming due to technical issues. If your webpages take more than a few seconds to load, have broken links or images, and are not mobile-friendly, then it is more than likely that the content experience will not be up to the required standard. To address this, prioritise mobile optimisation and conduct site maintenance to fix problems to improve accessibility and usability. Taking a closer look at technical SEO can also help.
Focus on topical completeness
When you start thinking about your content less as a single, one-off entity and more as a living, growing ecosystem, you can begin targeting topical completeness. Increasing content coverage will make your materials more relevant for longer. To enrich completeness, add fresh data sources and references, include up-to-date FAQs, and mix and match formats including images, infographics and webinars so that consumers can digest content in different ways
Know when to make the cut
Finally, you also need to know when to jettison content entirely, or combine it with others. If you have 15 pages on one topic, then they may compete with each other for positionon SERPs and lead to confusion for end users. If you are uncertain, then just ask yourself whether it adds value for audiences. If the answer is no, then make changes.
