这是我们通过更新旧博客文章在6个月内将网站流量增加75％的方式

In May,约翰Bonini我开始谈论更新DataBox的一些旧博客文章。beplay体育appios

Despite publishing new content at a high frequency, our traffic was relatively flat.

六个月后,我们会更新24的帖子。试验结果ts? Well, this graph paints a pretty—and pretty clear—picture.

See where traffic begins to spike there in June? That climb began only days after we republishedthe very first updated post.

According to John, they’d tried a variety of different things over the previous six months, but nothing seemed to work. Traffic was, as you can see, relatively static.

当我们开始更新旧博客文章时，情况发生了变化。

在我们花在这个项目上的六个月的过程中，约翰偶尔在LinkedIn和Twitter上分享了一些结果。许多人发表评论，要求提供更多信息：

• What constitutes an update?
• Is updating just a few words here and there enough?
• Did you just republish or republish and repromote?

In this post, I’ll answer all of those questions by walking you through four of the posts we updated, explaining exactly what I did to update each post, showing the results of the update, and sharing some lessons I learned along the way.

Updated Post Example #1: Google Analytics Dashboards

Early in the project, John usedAnimalz Reviveto put together a list of posts that needed to be updated. One post in the report he received from Revive stood out from the rest: a post from mid-2017 that featured 10 Databox Google Analytics dashboards.

从历史上看，该网站是最佳的博客文章之一，自峰值以来，它损失了超过50％的流量。除此之外，这是产品的非常重要的文章。Google Analytics（分析）beplay体育appios是DataBox的顶级集成，这篇文章强调了DataBox最有用的Google Analytics（分析）报告模板。

Here’s aWayback Machine linkshowing what this post looked like before I updated it.

After reviewing the existing content, searching for the target keyword—“Google Analytics dashboards”—in Google Search, and reviewing the top results, the reason for the traffic decline was clear: the post didn’t satisfy search intent.

“Dashboards” is a term the team at Databox uses to describe theirprebuilt reporting templates, but it also happens to be a term that Google Analytics uses within its own product.

So when people are searching for “Google Analytics dashboards,” they’re looking for examples of dashboards you can buildwithin Google Analytics. Databox’s post didn’t provide any examples of those. It was all Databox dashboards.

A quick Google search made the search intent discrepancy clear: all of the results that were outranking Databox’s post were specifically about dashboards you could build inside of Google Analytics.

The updated post, then, needed to satisfy that intent. We needed to focus more on dashboards in Google Analytics than dashboards in Databox.So that’s what I did.

But just because we needed to highlight dashboards in Google Analytics didn’t mean we couldn’t also highlight those same dashboards in Databox. In the update, I added screenshots of both products in order to both satisfy search intent for our target keyword和showcase Databox’s product.

And personally, I think it makes an even better case for using Databox. Seeing the two dashboards side-by-side highlights just how much more attractive Databox’s reports are.

试验结果ts:

的参考t icon below the graph notes the date that the post was updated. Traffic to the post spiked a few days after the update and has remained consistent ever since.

Key Takeaway:A crucial step in updating old blog posts for SEO is making sure that the post satisfies search intent for the keyword(s) it’s targeting. If it doesn’t, you need to either update the content so that it does match search intent or choose a different keyword to target with the post.

Update Post Example #2: Average Session Duration

One good reason to update your old blog posts is that your rankings are declining. Another good reason: your post was never really optimized for search in the first place.

That was the reasoning behind updatingthis contributor roundup about average session duration. While the content of the post was good—and the post itself was less than a year old—John believed that updating the post with a focus on optimizing it for search could give it a boost.

He was right:

Not only did traffic to this post jump after its update (the comment icon highlights the date the post was updated), but it’s continued to climb ever since.

The key to our success with this post was in optimizing it for multiple keywords.

最初，该帖子仅着眼于我们的贡献者提供的有关如何增加平均会话时间的提示。我希望更新的帖子更加全面，因此我针对各种相关关键字：

• “average session duration”
• “average session duration benchmark”
• “how to increase average session duration”
• “平均会话持续时间与页面上的平均时间”
• “what is a good average session duration”
• “what is average session duration”
• “ Google Analytics（分析）如何计算平均会话持续时间”

Most of those keywords have their own dedicated sections in the updated post, which has allowed the post to rank for multiple keywords and—better yet—multiple featured snippets.

Of course, the risk in writing a more comprehensive post is that you’ll overwhelm readers who just want one piece of information. Maybe they already know what average session duration is and how it’s calculated—they’re just there for the tips on how to increase it.

For that reason, we included a table of contents with anchor links so readers can jump to the section they’re most interested in if they’re not inclined to read the entire piece:

This not only delivers a better user experience, but it also often gets you an expanded search snippet highlighting some of the different sections within your post.

Key Takeaway:如果您在库中有博客文章最初未针对搜索进行优化（或者不太优化），那么他们是更新的绝佳候选人。进行关键字研究并分析其他高级搜索结果，以找到使您的帖子更全面的机会。

Update Post Example #3: Using Google Search Console for SEO

If you’ve read any of Databox’s recentcontributor roundup blog posts, you know that we take a narrative approach to roundup-style content rather than just listing a bunch of quotes next to pictures of contributors. But that wasn’t always the case.

当Databox团beplay体育appios队首次开始编写综述时，他们使用了更标准的报价列表：

So part of the exercise for updatingthis blog post about using Google Search Console for SEO(here’sthe original postcourtesy of Wayback Machine) was just transitioning the post into the newer narrative style.

就像示例第一的另一部分一样，最好迎合帖子以搜索意图。原始帖子认为读者对Google搜索控制台有更高级的了解，但是查看目标关键字的顶级搜索结果表明，大多数人都在寻找更多的初学者信息。

When updating this post, I broke it into two parts: the first covers basic information about how to use Google Search Console, and the second features our contributors’ more advanced tips. The results:

Organic traffic to the post doubled the week after the update and has remained consistent ever since.

Key Takeaway:Having old blog posts on your site that no longer match your current style is a good excuse to dig into those posts and make sure they’re ideally optimized. Not only will you provide a more consistent experience for readers, but you just might increase your traffic in the process.

Updated Post Example #4: Digital Marketing Software

So far, I’ve shown you three examples of updated blog posts that produced big organic traffic gains, but not every post we updated was so successful. Some, like this post on数字营销软件, suffered from short-term losses after their updates.

The drop-off happened because I tried to target a different keyword when updating the post. Before the update, it was ranking in the number-one spot for the keyword “digital marketing software.” But I wanted to try to get it to rank for “digital marketing tools”—a higher-volume keyword.

不用说，重新定位帖子行不通。实际上，弊大于利。

When I noticed the post’s rankings dropping — which was very quickly, luckily — for “digital marketing software” but not concurrently rising for “digital marketing tools,” I reverted some of my changes to reoptimize the post for its original keyword. After that, the rankings and traffic recovered (and traffic even increased a little bit).

Key Takeaway:Updating old content isn’t necessarily a one-and-done process. You have to be willing to watch your metrics closely and go back in and make changes when needed. Definitely be willing to try different things, but also keep good records of the changes you make so you can revert those changes when needed.

Updating Old Blog Posts: FAQ

Hopefully, the examples above answered some of the questions you might have had about how we generated so much success with our content update process. But to make things crystal clear, I thought I would also directly answer some of the questions we received.

What constitutes an update?

I selected the examples above to hopefully illustrate the highly unsatisfying yet true answer to this question: it depends.

Sometimes, updating a post means adjusting its positioning to better cater to user intent. Sometimes, it means adding more content to make the post more comprehensive. Sometimes, it means rewriting the entire post and just recycling the URL.

少但它偶尔的一件简单的事啊f answering one key question that’s missing, structuring headers correctly, or writing a better SEO title. But in my experience with updating content not only for Databox but for other clients as well, having success after making only minor edits is rare.

To paint a clearer picture, I typically spend between 4-8 hours updating a single blog post. My goal—and the goal I’d recommend for anyone who wants to replicate Databox’s successes—is to improve each post I update considerably.

Improve your old blog posts by better optimizing them for search. Improve them by making them better resources for searchers. Even better: do both.

Can I just change a few words here and there and update the date?

You can try it, but my guess is that you’ll probably just be wasting your time. Google knows what your article looked like before and after you updated its date, and it isn’t so easily fooled.

Beyond that, Google’s John Mueller已经明确说明了that Google doesn’t favor fresh content, so just having a recent date on an old piece of content is unlikely to have any significant impact on your rankings.

Did you just republish the content, or did you republish and promote it?

Pete Caputa—Databox’s CEO—typically shared the posts we updated through his own Twitter account, but other than that, we did nothing to promote the updated posts. We did, however, republish each updated post and要求Google重新启动.

您更新旧博客文章的过程是什么？

The answer to that question is another entire blog post of its own—one we’ve already written:

• Check out these17 tips for updating old blog postsas recommended by Databox’s community of marketing experts.
• Here’s a guide onhow to refresh old blog posts for SEO我将其汇总为详细说明自己的个人过程（以及更新DataBox帖子时使用的过程）。beplay体育appios
• 我还创建了一个checklist in Google Sheetsthat you can use as a quick reference when updating blog posts on your site (select文件>Make a Copy使用和编辑清单）。

我如何找到需要更新的旧博客文章？

While we initially used Animalz Revive to find posts in need of an update, we’ve realized since that we can get the same data using Databox.

Check out these instructions forhow to find blog posts that need to be updated using Databox, or grab this freeDecaying Site Pages & Posts dashboard.

How Can I Track the Performance of Updated Posts?

Databox is also a great tool for tracking and sharing the results of updated posts. Here’s the Databox dashboard I use for client reporting:

If you want to create this report in your Databox account, here are the instructions forhow to measure the performance of updated blog posts with Databox.

我更新的每个帖子都会产生巨大的流量和排名增加吗？

我们更新的一些帖子看到了巨大的收益。有些人看到了轻微的收益。有些年份相当静态。一对夫妇继续下降。

For the ones that continued to decline, it was usually because of heavier competition in the SERPs. I think if we had run a link-building campaign to secure more links to the declining posts, we would have had more success with those updates.

So will every post you update see dramatic gains? No. But if you’re doing it right, the traffic and rankings for your updated posts should start to climb—and your overall traffic alongside them.

Publishing New Content vs. Updating Old Blog Posts

When traffic stalls, the solution too often is to just start publishing more content: increase your publishing cadence, bring on freelancers, etc. But as these results show, sometimes the better approach is to just take care of what you’ve already created.

您不必始终发表新内容来成功使用SEO。Google不会奖励数量；它奖励质量。如果您将一些预算和精力付诸实践，以抛光已经生产的产品，那么您可能会开始看到静态流量向上趋势。

You might also like:

• 博客SEO: A 21-Point Checklist for Optimizing Every Blog Post for Search Engines
• 15 Featured Snippet Optimization Tips to Earn More Position-Zero Results
• 29 SEO Copywriting Tips for Writing High-Quality, High-Ranking Content
• 26 Blog Title Examples That Get High Organic Search CTRs
• Content Strategy vs. SEO Strategy: How to Decide Which Comes First