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 I don't feel that the current blog posts are outdated as of yet and in need of a re-written post, they just aren't up to "snuff" for potential readers and visitors.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!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Value of Links? What is each link worth?
Morning Everyone, I just had this thought and wondered what everyone's opinions were in terms of link value in monetary terms. We'll assume for the purposes of this that the links come from contextually relevant sites and that the sites in question have got the Moz DA from being high quality and have a good quality incoming link profile. Its a bit of a theoretical question, but i guess imagine if the only way you could get links was to pay for them, what would they be worth to you. This is link value for SEO purposes, they will have in addition value from traffic from good sites, that no doubt varies wildly depending on topic. I assume everyone also agrees on: The first link from a domain is the most valuable High DA sites are worth more than low ones. So could anyone who has an opinion on the link value suggest a monetary value for links. Its really just using a monetary amount to see how best to target my time. Here is my example of what might be expected, but I am hoping people with more knowledge will perhaps correct it. DA Rating First Link 2nd-5th Link 5th-10th Link 10Plus Links 5 $5 $2 $1 $0 15 $7 $3 $2 $1 25 $25 $10 $5 $2 35 $45 $20 $7 $3 45 $65 $30 $11 $4 55 $95 $45 $19 $5 65 $200 $100 $45 $6 75 $350 $120 $65 $9 85 $700 $240 $95 $15 95 $1100 $450 $200 $30
Link Building | | wellandpower1 -
Outbound links for SEO
A colleague of mine is arguing that having the right outbound links on your website is important for SEO. It seems to me that it would help Google and other SEs to categorize your site, but it wouldn't be a significant ranking factor in itself as anyone could do that. This is being used as an argument to keep links on our site linking to theirs. I've not done any experiments with it, however, and the site in question is ranking fairly well currently. I just don't think that's the main ranking factor as they have fairly good backlinks as well. Anyone have direct experience with this sort of argument? Thanks, Tom
Link Building | | TomBristol0 -
SEO Starter Cruiser Package
Has anyone used this product? I'm very interested in using it to help automate some of my efforts but want ot be sure they won't submit to bad directories, etc... Your advice is appreciated. Best, Mike
Link Building | | Rvinyl0 -
SEO Fightback
I just got a spam email company (SEO FIghtback) that claims they can create backlinks through trusted Wordpress networks that cannot ever be rejected by google. I believe it to be just another linking company wanting to suck $97 bucks a month out of me, I thought I would ask the experts on this site. The video was cool....for about 30 second......but that is all I could handle. It ultimately became one of the most irritating commericals ever and truly grated on my last nerve. Thanks
Link Building | | thompsoncpa0 -
Very Frustrated SEO
Hi Guys, I wake up this morning one very frustrated, tired and fed up SEO. I have always used very traditional link building methods upto last year directory submissions, social bookmarks, article submissions and maybe a few profie links but I always up front and honest with my clients what they were getting for their buck!. and sent them reports showing all links done. Obviously with the recent algorithm changes, I have switched my focus to content marketing (i hear you all cheering lol), however, I am stumped!. I have read everything I can get hold of to do with content marketing, registered with buzzstream for outreach opportunities and joined myblogguest just so I could understand the process a little bit more. I have watched the whiteboard Fridays and actually have a great opportunity to get in with a site using "guest post + niche". I love writing content which is a bonus. Okay here's my moan. Coming from a traditional SEO background and coming to content marketing late, do I ditch everything else. Is content marketing all I should be doing? or can I still do the some directory submissions (good PR moz rank only), social bookmarking (only for content marketing articles), profile linking (maybe I need to drop altogether). Is content marketing enough to rank a client?. I look at some clients competitors links and they have 100's of links to stuff that looks unnatural. Kind Regards Neil
Link Building | | nezona0 -
How do you search blogs by targeted demo or language?
I need to make a list of blogs popular with 2 0something men who are bi-lingual (spanish/english) Any suggestions? Tried to use Open Site Explorer (it wasn't working) Thanks!
Link Building | | wpsoule0 -
Some questions about guest posting
After reading this on the SEOMoz blog, I've decided to try some guest posting to gain some backlinks for our real estate site. I have a few questions for those of you who do this regularly: 1. If the site you are posting on allows up to 3 links in the signature box, do you generally use them all? My gut instinct is that one anchor texted link would give me the most bang for my buck. 3. How much attention do you pay to PR or DA? If a site is PR1 but relevant to your niche would you spend the time to write the article? 4. What negatives have you found when writing guest posts? Thanks!
Link Building | | MarieHaynes0 -
Where should I be focusing SEO efforts first?
Hi everyone, I am a digital marketing intern at a small marketing business. They have a really horrible, 1990's ish website which I am currently working with them on a plan to completely redo within a few months. Until then I am fixing some issues on their current site which includes SEOing their current content that will be moved to the new site. They have a ton of issues which include, but are not limited to, missing meta descriptions and title tags, no official keywords incorporated into their content, no analytics or tracking of keywords, a poor use of social media, and duplicate content. My plan was to fix all these issues first, then when the site relaunches really start focusing on the more advanced bits (which include link building). The previous intern spent 99% of his time posting on forums building "backlinks". I've been going through his posts and saw he posted on mainly marketing forums on topics but never included any type of link back to the site in his posts or on his forum profile (his reasoning was he wanted to gain a reputation with the forum first so the admin would not delete his posts or so he'd be able to put a link in his signature). He and the owner of the business say that this is the best and most effective way to help SEO and the owner is questioning whether or not I concentrate on that instead of the other issues. So what do you think? Do you think I should be fixing all these issues first and waiting until the site relaunches to concentrate on forum backlinking? Or do you think it would be more effective to just focus on my energies on forum backlinking? Also - the previous intern also told the owner that Wordtracker was a poor investment and is not useful. I have always thought that was sort of an industry standard. Do you think he's right? If so could you recommend something else? Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks 🙂
Link Building | | Grow0