Hoarders come in all types. There are people who hoard everyday items, some who hoard food, and some who hoard pets. Did you know there is also such a thing as a website content hoarder?
Content is definitely an essential part of internet marketing; however, leading SEO companies note that holding onto really old content might be doing you more harm than good. If you are hoarding old, outdated content on your blog, consider the following de-cluttering tips from experienced SEO firms and reap the rewards.
What Is Content Hoarding?
Content hoarding is a term that some SEO companies now use to describe the collection of posts on a blog that go back for years and could be looked on as website clutter. Even though one of the more important goals of effective internet marketing is to frequently post content, hoarding occurs when old content is never touched again, because outdated especially in the IT realm, and actually just clutters your website.
You may think that all those blogs and articles are helping your SEO, right? It has links and all the attributes of a good blog. In reality, it could be hindering your SEO efforts. It might be time for an audit of your previous content to improve the effectiveness of your entire website.
Why Is Content Hoarding Bad For Your Website?
There are a number of reasons why keeping older content could be a bad thing for your website. One prime concern of SEO firms is the fact that posts from a few years ago likely contain outdated information, which means they are essentially dead weight on your website.
Even though they add to the number of articles written, they serve no purpose to your readers. Most readers are looking for fresh, updated, and current content. When they come across a link in the SERPs to a blog of months or even years past, most are going to skip it and move on to more current blogs.
How Does Content Hoarding Affect Pagerank?
What can become especially problematic is the way these older blog posts can negatively affect your internet marketing efforts. When your readers ignore any of your posts, they leave that post and your bounceback rate goes up. This in turn is a message to Google that maybe your content on that subject isn't so good - which in turn causes the overall value of your website to go down.
SEO companies warn that when this happens your pagerank goes down and it becomes more difficult to get good recognition by Google. Pages that were once cutting edge are now dragging you down.
How Do You Fix Old Content?
The best way to deal with old content and improve its effectiveness is to periodically audit older posts. Begin by going through your blogs in reverse order - older to newer - and determine if the information is still relevant in any way and can still be used. If a post is irrelevant, remove it and do a 301 redirect to a newer page with similar, more current information. If the information is still relevant, edit and freshen the content to improve its appeal to readers.
Optimize and Promote Refreshed Blogs
SEO firms recommend reviewing and improving optimization, updating and optimizing images if necessary, and making the post more complete and relevant for today’s readers. Update the blog with newer information and basically turn outdated information into a fresh and like-new blog post. Once you have done this, most websites are noting that the content has been updated on a certain date and list it just before the content so readers can see that the information is current.
Now you can start promoting the updated post to your readers and on social media. Your older content will start working for you again, rather than dragging your blog down. Best of all, since your links remain intact, you retain all that link juice you may have gained over the years. Yet in Google's eyes, it is almost-new content and increasing your website's value.
Recognize the symptoms of content hoarding and do something about it. Top SEO companies recommend auditing older posts as a part of your internet marketing plan and regularly update older content to be fresh and useful. The key words here are refresh, reuse, and recycle older content so content hoarding is never a problem and your blog continues to help you rank well with the search engines!