How To Find, Repair and Rejuvenate Old Content
In just the same way that you would change items around in the shop window if the current display is not luring customers, you need to sort out underperforming pages on your website so that there’s a greater chance of converting more sales out of it.
With online sales such an important source of revenue for many businesses, you need to take every possible step to have excellent content on every page of your website. Here are some pointers on how to spot underperforming content and a look at ways to both repair and revitalize it so every page is fit for purpose.
Take A Good Look At The Content Analytics
The most efficient way of identifying content that is not performing as you would want is to delve into your content’s analytics. There are certain pages that you can target using analytical tools, especially ones that appear to have little or no organic traffic and a drop-off rate that is higher than usual compared to other pages.
Other clues that you have an underperforming page include finding one with a high bounce or drop-off rate. If you find that the majority of visitors are spending a lower than average time on a certain page in comparison to others and there is a noticeable lower engagement rate, these are all signs of an underperforming page that you can pinpoint using content analytics.
Address Each Specific Issue
If you’re going to be successful with the changes you make to your content to improve performance, it makes sense to target the specific issues that you have managed to identify rather than adopt a scattergun approach and just make changes in the hope that you’ll improve response rates.
You’ll know the profile of your typical customer as well as anyone, and it could be that organic traffic is not the main way that you manage to attract visitors, but there should always be a certain percentage of these types of visitors.
Companies like The HOTH, for example, are there to help you with SEO issues and find ways of improving response rates, so it might be a case of gathering the information and then setting an agenda with regard to what action you need to take to drive more traffic and increase sales conversion rates.
No Need To Start Over
You would be forgiven for thinking that the only real way of resolving a problem with underperforming content would be to call time on what is already there and simply replace it with fresh new content. There’s nothing wrong with that strategy, other than the obvious drawback that it will be time consuming to create that new content from scratch and could cost you to employ someone to write it for you. So it’s well worth revisiting what you already have and giving it a makeover.
It’s also worth remembering that your existing content could be considered the foundation of your site and you could be giving up a fair percentage of traffic by discarding what you already have and starting again. A good and cost effective tactic that works is to re-optimize your old content by using long-tail keywords.
It’s often the case that long-tail keywords consistently perform well in search engines, mainly because they tend to be highly specific and are not under such a competitive strain with other keywords, making it easier to rank them.
Long-tail keywords can generate a high proportion of your organic search traffic, so take a look at your existing content and see how you can tweak it to boost your search engine rankings. The efficient use of keywords can sometimes get quite technical, so it could pay to get someone with experience in this area if you’re unsure how to make the most of this angle.
The Power of a Word
That old phrase about the pen being mightier than the sword still rings true in a digital age, and if you use the right ones in your headlines, it’s likely to have a positive impact on your click-through rate. Add power words to your headlines and it could improve the performance of your old posts and give the content a new lease on life.
If you’re wondering what constitutes a power word: best selling, authentic, guaranteed, and proven are some prime examples. Use words like these in your headlines and you could discover what power words could do to revitalize your old content.
