What’s Old is New: How and Why Google Rewards Updating Old Content

As a business owner, we know that you don’t always have the time that you’d like to write engaging, informative, and SEO-optimised content for your website or blog.

We also know that you want your website and blog to serve as a way for your target market to better understand your brand as a whole.

But the truth is that, at a certain point, you may feel like you’ve run out of ideas. Or, perhaps you love some of the older content you’ve written, but feel that it’s not as optimised or current as it could be.

The good news?

Google rewards optimising and republishing your past content.

But why is it such a smart idea to republish your older ideas — and how exactly will Google reward you for doing so?

Keep on reading this post to find out.

How Republishing Benefits Your Market

Before we speak any more about the ways in which Google rewards republishing, let’s talk about how optimising your older posts will benefit the most important people of all: your consumers and site visitors.

First of all, providing your target market with outdated information isn’t just useless to them. It also reflects poorly on you.

But just because your brand has shifted focus or certain rules, products, or even “norms” have changed, doesn’t mean that your old content is useless.

You just need to find a way to make it current again. It was useful to your consumers in the past, and it can be again.

You don’t want your customers to peruse through your blog, only to find what amounts to a history lesson about your company, your products/services, or your industry as a whole.

Instead, you want to optimise that old content.

But why?

First and foremost, because those high-traffic blog posts have already been indexed by search engines like Google. If you delete them and publish a totally new article on a similar but updated topic?

You’ll undo all the hard work that your past link building strategies, keywords, comments, and more have done to get your post ranked higher in search engine results.

Now, let’s take a closer look at why you should republish your old content.

Republishing and SEO: What You Need to Know

In this section, we’ll discuss how the famed Google Algorithm actively rewards websites that republish past content.

Sometimes referred to as “historical optimisation,” republishing older content is an SEO strategy that the majority of companies overlook.

So, not only will your content be more useful to your viewers — you’ll also be ahead of the competition.

Less Is More

First of all, let’s cover a hard truth.

We’re living in a world where there is an excess of content. This is because companies everywhere have finally started to recognise the importance of content marketing.

In other words, there’s a major imbalance of supply and demand in the content world.

This means that your content will have more competition than ever before.

But, because currently about 50% of all content being published isn’t actually being read?

It also means that you can use the weakness of your competitors’ content to your advantage.

You can optimise your content to ensure that it fills a direct need, go further towards impacting your search engine ranking, and improve your authority in the eyes of your readers.

Focus on creating less content, but creating better content.

Remember that not every piece of content that you write needs to be “evergreen.” This is because, as you’ve hopefully realised, you can always update your content to reflect what’s happening now.

Google Is Always Testing

It’s hardly a secret that the Google Algorithm is nearly constantly in flux.

Google crawls through the content online to categorize it, but also to analyze it.

Their bots want to know what the most popular articles on a certain subject are — especially now, with the rise of Google Snippets in voice search.

Plus, the longer that readers stay on your blog (because they’re reading useful and well-written content) the more that Google will compare the time a user spends on your site as opposed to another site’s post on a similar topic.

This causes your site to not only rise in the search engines but also to maintain its place at the top.

Of course, you’ll also be able to learn more about how to actually optimise your content each time you republish. You’ll figure out which headlines are the most effective, which keywords you should focus on, and learn even more about your demographic.

Plus, when you republish a piece of content, Google recognises that you’ve updated your website as a whole.

Websites that are frequently updated — even if you’re republishing your old content — will rise in the search engine rankings. You’ll give yourself a boost in the rankings with every post you republish.

You’ll Teach Google about Your Areas of Expertise

It’s also a smart idea to republish your past content because it tells Google and other search engines the topics that you’re especially an expert in.

Google will, of course, notice that you’re publishing lots of content, and will take that into account when calculating your ranking factor as discussed above.

But it will also look at the specific topics that you write about, and will see which articles people come to your website to read the most frequently.

Over time, Google will actually be able to “learn” which topics your readers have started to see you as an authority on. So, when people make an inquiry on the search engine related to one of your areas of expertise?

Google will direct that traffic your way.

This means that not only will you rise in the search engine rankings. This also gives you the opportunity to connect with the people who are the most likely to actually take some sort of an action on your website.

How to Republish Old Content the Right Way

Finally, let’s speak briefly about how to republish the kind of content that Google publishing looks for.

First of all, ensure that you and the SEO and content marketing professionals you’re working with select the right posts to republish. This means that your most popular posts and pages deserve an update.

Working with digital marketing professionals ensures that you have thorough access to Google Analytics and other tools to help you to learn which posts you need to focus on.

Look for grammar and spelling errors, improve the writing style (this is where hiring professional content writers will benefit you) and ensure the images you’ve included are current and fit with the content being discussed.

Then, update the actual content to reflect your market, brand, current industry trends, and business goals.

Finally, focus on promoting that piece of newly-optimised content.

This means that you need to place links to it on all of your social media accounts, of course. But you certainly shouldn’t stop there. You can include the piece of updated content in your company e-newsletter, as well.

Perhaps you could even create different types of content based around the same topic. This means things like making a video tutorial that explains the concepts or shows off the products that your article was based on.

The more types of content you have, the more likely you’ll be able to meet your target market where they are.

You’ll also certainly be able to expand your market as a whole in the process.

We strongly recommend working with a professional Internet marketing agency to ensure you promote these posts correctly, and through the most optimal channels.

Google Rewards Republishing

We hope that this post has helped you to better understand not only how Google rewards the decision to republish your content, but also how and why it matters to your market and brand.

Remember to step back from an intense focus on creating new content all of the time. Instead, every so often, ensure that your older content is completely optimised for search engines and your target market.

Looking for an experienced, expert digital marketing service to help you make that happen? Sometimes it pays to have the right professional in your corner.

If you need help, we invite you to spend some time on our website to learn more about what we have to offer.

Whether you need assistance with building a responsive website, graphic design, digital marketing, or SEO in general, get in touch with us to get started today.