Is it SEO-wise to edit an already published article?

[zorsto]

One of the pages on the website is #7 on the first page for a highly competetive keyword. Since I would like to improve rankings and the page is not optimized (e.g. keyword density is 0), is it SEO-wise to edit an article and create a good on-page optimization? Of course, the ultimate goal is to be in TOP 3 for a specific keyword.

[zorsto]

The page I'm talking about is more like an explanation about an offered service, but it doesn't have any on-page optimization. Great response. I will make sure to update the page and the entire website for that matter.

[WhoWuddaThunk]

EGOL is absolutely correct.

[EGOL]

If you can improve the article - especially the content - then you should do it without any concerns.

I have been running a site for about 8 years.  In that time I have published a lot of content.  Now I am at the point where more of my time is spent on updating articles or improving articles than publishing new articles.   I am always adding additional photos, updates from the news, improved photos, sometimes complete rewrites.  A lot of my early content was fairly short articles.  Now I am replacing them with much more substantive articles with lots of images, photos, graphs, data.   Rankings very often jump up after a major improvement is done.

One of the pages on the website is #7 on the first page for a highly competetive keyword. Since I would like to improve rankings and the page is not optimized (e.g. keyword density is 0), is it SEO-wise to edit an article and create a good on-page optimization?

I often spend one, two or three days on improving an article like this and have someone helping me with images, photos, research.  Make content on this page that will blow everyone else away.  Go out there to make their content look puny.