You don’t need to go viral or post sensational content to encourage your audience to keep coming back to your website or blog. What you actually need to do is to regularly update your content or sometimes even rewrite it.
Yet, knowing the differences between doing content updates or content rewrites is essential; otherwise, your work and effort will be in vain.
For all our clients, including SaaS businesses, we stick to a content strategy that includes regular re-evaluation of content performance. We look at specific metrics before deciding whether the right approach would be an update or a rewrite.
Check out our effective practices for both types of content refreshing below.
What Is Content Update and How to Do It the Right Way
Let’s say you wrote an article with the headline “ Top Technical Challenges for SaaS companies in 2022”. This is a clear and simple article example that requires yearly updates.
From an SEO perspective, we recommend that you update:
- title tag
- URL slug
- meta description
- (maybe also) image titles and/or image Alt Text – if these contain the word “2022.”
From a content perspective, we always make sure to:
- go over the entire body and replace 2022 with the current year; alternatively, you could remove the year to make it an evergreen article or use the trick of adding “%%currentyear%%” in Yoast SEO to automate the year update;
- check all links and fix 404 errors;
- change or add more relevant internal and external links;
- remove images, infographics, and any media formats that are no longer relevant and include ones that are more up to date;
- update or add FAQs;
- update headings and table of contents.
- cautiously review the article with generative AI to see if we missed anything (making sure to verify the info and never use the exact phrasing AI engines provide)
All of the above are more high-level, but nevertheless important, and can require a significant amount of time to complete on your own.
The trickier part comes with fact-checking the information from the article. We always make sure to take a good look at details like:
- statistics and numbers in general (if you included any stat data in your article, these might need to be updated; if you didn’t and believe they would add value to your piece, look it up and include this data);
Check this example:
- mentions of events – for instance, maybe you mentioned an important event in your intro or conclusion that was fresh at the moment of the writing, but today is redundant and no longer interesting for your readers; hence, you need to reconsider and adapt these sections with the present situation;
Take this article’s intro that’s no longer relevant these days (at least not entirely):
- fluff content or any section where you mistakenly repeated the same information but maybe used different wording; it’s an honest mistake, but you should delete repeatable or fluff parts;
- relevancy: you need to ask yourself: “how many of last year’s technical challenges for SaaS are still a challenge today?” If you realize that some examples no longer fit today’s context, remove them or add new ones.
How do You Know You Need to Update Content?
Some of the key metrics we take into account for a content update are:
- a downgrade in terms of Google ranking;
- the content was written and published a long time ago, and no one made any updates to it;
- the piece has an important value for the brand (e.g., a landing page that needs to generate leads); thus you need to ensure that the content is spot-on, comprehensive, and relevant.
Updating content is good for SEO because:
Recurring content updates are part of the tried and true 10x content strategy and are also very useful for SEO. Short recurring updates move the article towards its ideal form without you spending too much time on it. At the same time, you’re sending positive signals to search engines, essentially telling them you haven’t abandoned that article and they should give it another crawl and reconsider it for SERPs.
Bogdan Minuț, Content Marketer & SEO Specialist @ Digital Tailors Agency
What is Content Rewrite, and What Does It Include?
Even for a short article or blog post, rewriting content is never easy and the kind of task that gives writers shrivers up their spines. But a rewrite isn’t always difficult to perform.
We decide that a content needs a rewrite if:
- it doesn’t perform well (we look at metrics like website traffic, backlinks); it may have performed well in the past, but something made search engines rank your content lower now;
- it doesn’t satisfy search intent (optimized for a keyword that doesn’t match the search intent).
There are mainly three reasons why you may have missed the mark with the search intent:
- you didn’t correctly understand why a person is searching for that keyword (the reasoning and their first thoughts);
- you didn’t consider or had no clear idea who this person is (details like age, gender, status, etc.);
- you missed to think about what this person expects to find on the SERP.
Example:
Let’s say your SaaS product is one of the best productivity tools for developers. If you create a new landing page, you don’t want it to focus on the keyword “best dev productivity tool”. That’s unless you don’t want your page to be buried after page 3 on Google.
Type “best dev productivity tool” on Google, and on the 1st page, you’ll see these results:
Except for 2 or 3 sponsored ads, they’re mostly list type-of articles with recommendations of several dev tools but no landing page. That’s because this keyword fits more into the informational search intent category rather than commercial or transactional, which would be the best fit for a landing page.
If you want to get on the 1st page of Google, you need to combine a focus keyword and secondary keywords that match your product’s best and unique features. “Dev productivity tool“ is very broad.
If the core of what your product offers is “custom API endpoint” for instance, that’s your focus keyword!Here’s what content rewrite includes:
- all the steps that you read above for the content update
- rewrite of phrases or entire sections but ensuring to:
- include the newly agreed target keyword (s)
- change or adapt the approach so it matches the search intent
Example:
Your business is related to streaming services. You’ve created blog posts or web pages that target mostly teenagers and young adults. But after a while your user persona has changed, and you discover that 65% of your users are actually people over 40.
Maybe they’re still interested in your service and buy or renew subscriptions. Yet, you’d still have to re-think most of your content and adapt it based on your users’ interests and needs.
You’d have to transform an article titled “Best 10 Teen Romance Movies” into “Best 10 Romantic Comedies that Older Adults Can Enjoy” for instance. You don’t necessarily have to come up with 10 different movie titles and updated descriptions. Some may be fit for any age, but you’d have to additionally change the tone, style, maybe even the format.
For example, you might consider including technical details about how these people should use your product by the end of the article. You need to take into account that at least some of them may not be tech-savvy and surely have a different understanding of using tech products compared to younger people.
Before You Click the “Update” Button
Whether for a content update or rewrite, let’s imagine you’re at the point where you checked all the items from your list of “must-haves.” Proofread and go through the entire content piece once again, even if you wholeheartedly believe you didn’t miss a thing.
You need to ensure that your article or web page keeps a logical flow and direction and that every section naturally introduces the next one. Additionally, check if you kept the same tone and style throughout the entire piece.
Differences Between Content Update and Content Rewrite & The Right Time for Each Approach
A content update requires a careful look at all SEO elements, plus a re-check of relevant information you included in a content piece. We recommend a content update at least once or twice a year. Still, you can forget this rule and update more often if you accidentally bump into new information you can include in one of your articles, for instance.
A content rewrite includes all the parts of the content update and more; you’d have to change the approach or the angle, sometimes even the style and format. Regarding how often or when’s the right time for a rewrite, it depends on the goal you want to achieve with a certain content piece.
Our approach:
- for a landing page for a new product with the goal to attract leads: if we don’t notice good enough results after one month, we don’t wait any longer and decide to rewrite;
- for a blog post with brand awareness as the main goal: we look into the metrics for a content rewrite and search intent (mentioned above) after three-four months.
For both update and rewrite, you need to have a bird’s eye view. Apart from the content details, always take into account your target audience and ensure that whatever you write satisfies their needs, interests, and pain points.
Conclusion
Hope you now have a better understanding of the differences between content rewrite and content update. Whenever you’re unsure what you should do, check Google Search Console to see how your website performs in the search results. You’ll get a clearer overview of what you should keep doing and what you should adjust.
Remember to always put yourself in your readers’ shoes before and after writing any content. Think about what information would be valuable for them considering today’s context and the goal they’re trying to achieve when looking for that specific information.
If you need additional support with this, our team of experienced content marketers is more than ready to help you out.
Reach out to us so you can improve your audience engagement.