How To (and Why) Purge Your Outdated Content [CHECKLIST]

Why You Should Update More and Write Less

• Traffic
• Credibility
• Readership

An up-to-date relevant older post will result in just as much attention in social media, bring in just as much traffic back to your blog, will be just as likely to be linked to and ranked in the search engines as a brand new post.

When people find their way to an outdated post on your blog (whether through search engines, mentions on other blogs, guest posts, etc.), they are very unlikely to be impressed – you’ll lose your credibility and potential readership.

And the difference between updating an older post vs writing a brand new one? Hours and hours of work.

Don’t get me wrong: writing new content should remain the cornerstone of your online marketing. BUT your brand new content should be just a tip of the iceberg leading your readers to the wealth of expertise in your industry – i.e. the rest of your blog.

In other words, it’s time to stop writing and start purging.

Let’s start with a handy checklist you can apply to any post you need to update.

Queue ‘em Up

1. Find Posts that Bring In the Most Search Engine Traffic
2. Find Posts that Bring In the Most Referral Traffic
3. Find Posts that Bring In the Most Social Media Traffic
4. Include Posts from Your Sidebar
5. Include Posts You Most Often Internally Link To

9 Steps to Update Outdated Content

 1. Update outdated copy

Replace outdated data/stats with current ones
Replace outdated examples with new, fresh ones
Add any new best practices

 2. Update Images

Update screenshots if things have changed
Make sure you don’t use any copyrighted images
Create a powerful featured image to grab attention and drive traffic

3. Update the post call-to-action (CTA)

Make sure the post has a relevant CTA
Remove any conflicting CTAs

4. Update internal links

Include new relevant internal links

5. Clean up external links

Link out to fresh relevant sources
Clean up any 404 links, especially in your comment section

 6. Update SEO

Optimize the post’s title tag
Optimize the post’s meta description

 7. Optimize Social Media Markups

Add Open Graph markup
Add Twitter Cards markup

 8. Update post title

9. Repurpose

Rules of Thumb When Updating Blog Posts

1. Change the post; don’t touch URL
2. Add a post footer to explain the updates
3. Post Updated on Date
4. Remove content that’s beyond help

Queue ‘em Up

First, you need to determine which blog posts you need to update first – and it only makes sense to start with those that currently enjoy the most web traffic.

Here’s your plan of action step by step.

Step 1: Find Posts that Bring In the Most Search Engine Traffic

Chances are the majority of your posts that are currently bringing in search engine traffic were published a while ago, thus are most likely outdated.

Let’s start our content purge potentials by identifying our top search engine performers.

The best way to do it is to take a look at your top Landing Pages in your Google Analytics (found under Acquisition=>Search Engine Optimization=>Landing Pages).

Alternatively, you can use a custom SEO dashboard data – you can quickly upload one into your own Google Analytics account absolutely free in this post:

5 Custom Google Analytics Dashboards in 5 Minutes [Free Downloads]

If Google Analytics scares you more than helps, check out Kristi Hines’ recent

How to Use Google Analytics: Getting Started

Step 2: Find Posts that Bring In the Most Referral Traffic

Referral traffic is the kind of traffic that comes to your website via a citation on another website, for example, a blog mention, social media share, YouTube video, etc.

To learn more about referral traffic and how to get more of it to your blog, be sure to read:

Where Does Website Traffic Come From: Search Engine and Referral Traffic

For this particular step of purging our outdated content, we’ll focus on referrals from other blogs in particular.

Here’s what you do:

1. Go to Acquisition=>Channels=>Referral.
2. Click on Referral to get a list of referring sites.
3. Click on a specific site name to find the post(s) that mention your blog.
4. Since Google Analytics don’t currently list the Landing Pages for these referrals (i.e. which of your posts/pages those referral blogs are linking out to), you’ll have to visit each of them manually to get that info.

Step 3: Find Posts that Bring In the Most Social Media Traffic

Most of social media traffic is very short-lived in nature: you share a post, it gets picked up by social media influencers (lucky you!), you enjoy a spike in traffic, which quickly dies down.

It wouldn’t be very productive for us to include those kinds of posts in our content purge list.

However, if you use social media sites like YouTube, Slideshare, and others of similar nature, you might find a few of your posts that are frequented by referrals from those sites.

These are the ones that are definitely worth keeping your attention.

Here’s what you do:

1. Go to Acquisition=>Social=>Network Referrals.
2. Click on any particular network that brings in a steady flow of traffic.
3. Get a list of your blog posts that get the most traffic love.

By the way, to learn more about driving an insane amount of traffic from Slideshare, be sure to read the following:

Slideshare Traffic Case Study: From 0 to 243,000 Views in 30 Days

Step 4: Include Posts from Your Sidebar

If you are running any sort of “Popular Posts” or “Recent Posts” widgets in your sidebar, you’d better make sure you direct your readers to quality posts – goes without saying.

Don’t need any tools to figure this one out; just add those posts to your content purge list.

SIDE NOTE: How I do my Web Traffic Hits popular posts in sidebar

The best way to take control over the quality of posts shown in your sidebar is to create a separate category (I called mine “Best of”) where you manually add posts that you know will add value to your readers’ experience.

Then use any Popular Post widget to display those posts in your sidebar limiting it to that specific category only.

Step 5: Include Posts You Most Often Internally Link To

This is an easy one as well: I bet there’s a number of your blog posts you find yourself internally linking out to in many of your new posts.

That, most likely, is an indication that those are your pillar evergreen posts that deserve an occasional sprucing up.

You guessed it: they go on your content purge list as well.

SIDE NOTE: How to make your internal linking a piece of cake

Don’t scratch your head every time you need to find that special post to reference when writing a new blog post.

Create a simple spreadsheet of your best posts and add to it whenever you publish a new link-worthy post.

Doesn’t have to be anything fancy: a simple Google Drive spreadsheet with post names and URLs broken down into categories will do just fine.

You can take a look at/copy mine here.

Now that you have your list of potential content purge candidates, it’s time to have fun with it.

Steps to Update Your Outdated Content

Here’s your checklist on what to do (in order of importance) when updating a post.

A few in-depth notes on the steps above:

Step 1. Update Outdated Copy

This one is self explanatory.

A hands-on example of transforming a dull blah post into something evergreen and sharable:

Conduct Unbecoming a Dull Writer

One important thing to note when updating your post copy: make sure it’s written the way your reader prefers to read it.

And how does your reader want to read it? BARELY.

It’s true. Skimming is the new reading.

With that in mind and to make the best of your readers’ attention, structure your posts in the following way:

Image source

Put your best foot forward and don’t hold back – give your readers the skinny quickly and concisely. And don’t forget to add those sharing buttons at the top!

Speaking of which:

Why not share this post right now – THANK YOU!

Step 2. Update Images

This is something I am currently in the process of doing at Traffic Generation Café: scouring through all images in my Media Library, purging the ones that might be copyrighted, i.e. land me in a pool of legal trouble, and replacing them with images that fit my writing style a lot better.

To learn about driving more blog traffic through creating better images for your blog posts, read:

Free Blog Post Images: Where to Find Them, How to Use Them

How To Create a Blog Post Image That Gets Noticed And Drives Traffic

I am often asked what I use to create all my screenshots, various images I share on social media, as well as my featured images for all my blog posts.

My software of choice: SnagIt from TechSmith.

Step 3. Update Your Call-to-Action (CTA).

Say it with me: C-O-N-V-E-R-S-I-O-N-S – that’s our ultimate goal when publishing anything on our sites.

Is your post CTA a strong one? Do you even have one? Do you have one too many?

The best source to learn more about CTAs, is this free PDF from Hubspot:

101 Examples of Effective Calls-to-Action - Hubspot.com

And if you prefer to watch, here’s an excellent Whiteboard Friday video from Rand Fishkin at Moz.com:

Improving Social & Subscription Calls to Action – Moz.com

Step 4. Update Internal Links

Internal links (links in your blog posts pointing to other relevant pages/posts on your blog) are one of the most effective ways to promote your content. That’s how most of your readers discover various posts on your blog and that’s what encourages search engine spiders to crawl your site.

With that in mind, your internal linking needs to be smart, effective, relevant, and up to date.

And DON’T use any automatic plugins to do your internal linking for you – it’s bad for SEO and usually results in bad reader experience.

Step 5. Clean up External Links

As time goes by, your blog will inevitably end up with a bunch of 404 Not Found errors, links to spam websites (yes, websites change hands and go rogue all the time), and outdated mentions.

Needless to say, all of the above is bad for business.

• No one likes to click on a link just to end up on a 404 page.
• If your comment section is inundated with links to less-than-reputable sites, you’ll just end up attracting even more spam.
• Even though broken links might not have a direct effect on your rankings, it might still limit your crawl budget (how much time search engine spiders spend crawling your website).

To learn more about 404 Not Found Errors, how they affect your site, and how to deal with them (plus a funny video about 404 errors – who would’ve thought!), visit:

404 (Not Found) Errors: Do They Hurt Your Site?

Here’s your plan of action to purge the links that threaten your blog’s well-being:

1. Scan your entire blog or a specific page for broken links.

If you are a tear-the-bandaid-off-in-one-quick-swoop kind of person, you might want to do a complete site scan and do one massive attack on all your broken links.

It takes time, but this kind of purge might be the best way to go.

To see what free tools I suggest to use for your broken links purge, read:

Why Broken Link Checker Doesn’t Work and Free Alternatives

If you are not ready for a project and to stay focused on our task of purging specific outdated content, the easiest way to determine if you have any broken links on a specific page is to use a free broken link checker like DeadLinkChecker.com.

2. Update the page with relevant external resources.

Link out to fresh relevant sources outside your blog that is.

When you generously mention/link to other blogs in your blog posts, you end up promoting your own blog by promoting others.

See some great examples/guides to do just that:

Blogger Outreach: How to Get Influencers to Promote Your Content for Free – at BoostBlogTraffic.com

How I Got the Most Shared Post of the Week for Blog Promotion – at Moz.com

So go ahead and add those external links; it’s good for your reading community and good for you!

By the way, if you are afraid to loose your blog traffic to other sites, here are two tips to help:

1. Make sure you add target=”_blank” to all your (external) links to ensure those links open in a new window/tab.
2. Install Sharedby.co toolbar on your site. I’ve had it for a while at Traffic Generation Café and saw fantastic results with it.

To learn more about Sharedby.com toolbar, check out:

How to Visibli Increase Your Website Traffic in 5 Minutes Flat

Step 6. Optimize SEO

SEO practices are ever-changing and we need to keep up if we have any hope to attract search engine visitors.

When updating an older blog post, pay attention to the post’s title tag, meta description, as well as topical keywords within the content body.

To make my life easier, I use Easy WP SEO plugin to keep track of my on-page optimization at Traffic Generation Café.

Also remember that due to the recent Google changes, you need to keep your title tag to under 55 characters.

If SEO is not your strong suit, make sure to take a look at:

SEO Traffic 2014: Your One-Stop Reference Guide for Non-SEOs

SEO Traffic 101: Simple Strategies to Getting More Search Engine Traffic

Step 7. Optimize Social Media Markups

Social media markup (or lack thereof) can make a huge difference in how your post looks when shared on social media and how much social media traffic it will actually drive.

It’s painfully useless to go through so much work of updating your outdated blog posts without reaping the ultimate reward of more website traffic, don’t you think?

Social media markup includes optimizing your post for Open Graph (Facebook markup, but also used by Google+ and Twitter) and Twitter Cards (used by Twitter).

To make including social markup a breeze, I once again suggest using Easy WP SEO plugin I mentioned above – just add blog post title, description, and featured image and your post will start standing out in social media. Fill out the rest and you’ll be way ahead of your competitors.

To learn more about social media markup, take a look at this handy Slideshare presentation by the Walt Disney Company at last SMX Advanced:

Happily Ever After: Open Graph Twitter Cards And Schema.org By Jeff Preston from Search Marketing Expo – SMX

Also, learn everything you need to about Schema.org markup (used by Google, Yahoo, and Bing) in this post:

Schema Markup: How to Make Your Content More Clickable and Shareable

Step 8. Update post title

Last but not least, make sure your title lives up to the post’s greatness.

My personal suggestion is to drop fancy and go for benefits.

Love the following examples from Michael Gray’s Why You Should Blog Less and Update More, showing how you should/shouldn’t title your blog post.

Stay away from:

• How to Make Your Analytics Reports More Beautiful than a Double Rainbow … and Know What it Means!
• Why You Don’t Need to Be A Grumpy Cat When Working on Your Link Building
• How to Make Your Infographics Stand Out Like Honey-Boo-Boo in A Bikini
• What Dance Moms Can Teach You About Dealing with Crazy Clients

Go for:

• Link Building Strategies That Won’t Make you Crazy
• How to Make Sure your Infographics Go Viral
• Strategies For Dealing with Difficult Clients

Couldn’t agree more.

Step 9 (optional). Repurpose your blog post.

This is my most favorite way to maximize website traffic and conversions from each post I write: Content Leverage.

In short, you take your blog post and repurpose it in various media formats; for instance.

1. PowerPoint Presentation: create an outline, turn it into a PowerPoint presentation, and submit it to Slideshare-type sites.
2. Video: make an audio to go with the presentation and turn it into a video – syndicate to video sites.
3. PDF: make a transcript of your video, turn it into a PDF – syndicate to PDF sites.
4. Podcast: turn the audio file into a podcast.
5. Images: turn key points of your post into images – submit them to sites like Pinterest and Instagram.
6. Guest posts: use the main concepts of your original post and develop them into a guest post (not duplicating, but complimenting it); link the guest post to your original one.
7. Free WSO: submit your PDF as a free WSO through WarriorForum.com.
8. Webinars: if the topic has depth to it, you can expand your original PowerPoint presentation into a webinar (conduct it for your own readers or, better yet, team up with another blogger to present it to their readers).

The opportunity to drive web traffic utilizing the same original piece of content grows exponentially!

To learn more about milking your content for all traffic it’s worth, take a look at:

Content Marketing Leverage System: How to Multiply Your Reach

Rules of Thumb When Updating Blog Posts

Before we wrap up the post, here are a few useful pointers to remember when purging your outdated content.

1. Change the post; don’t touch URL.

It makes much more sense for SEO purposes to update the original post, rather than publish the updated version under a new URL.

Important to remember:

Since the post you are editing is live, it’s best to copy/paste the original version into a new post draft, make all the necessary changes there, then copy/paste everything to replace the original post.

2. Add a post footer to explain the updates.

It’s always a good idea to add a note at the bottom of your updated post to tell your readers that the post has been completely revamped.

This is particularly important if a post has quite a few comments accumulated since it was first published. Your readers might find it frustrating to see the new publish date, but comments from months and years ago.

3. Post Updated on Date.

You can also choose to display a “Last Updated On” date on your newly updated post just like I do at Traffic Generation Café at the top of each post.

This is a great way to let readers know they are reading something that’s current and relevant.

For a tutorial on how to add this function to your blog, take a look at:

3 Ways to Update Your Already Published Blog Post Date - at wpresstic.com

Word of caution: don’t mess with the code without backing up your blog first.

That’s not a problem when you are hosted on WP Engine because they give you a staging server where you can test everything you do without stress.

Also, if you are using Genesis Framework for your blog, like I do at Traffic Generation Café, here’s a simpler way (and you don’t have to mess with the code – bonus): the Simple Edits plugin for Genesis plus a short string of code to add – thanks to Chris Lema for this tip.

4. Remove content that’s beyond help.

Sometimes the best thing to do with outdated content is to get rid of it altogether.

Examples of such content at Traffic Generation Café would include posts like:

• old Weekly Marketing Skinnies (who wants to read old news!)
• my earlier posts which clearly indicate I didn’t know what I was doing
• seasonal sales on various internet marketing tools
• etc.

Before trashing any old blog post, make sure to redirect its URL to the most relevant page – another post on a similar topic or its category page. I use Redirection plugin for that.

For a more in-depth study of the effects of deleting older posts, read:

Why We Deleted 900 Blog Posts And What Happened Next – Koozai.com

Updating Old Content Marketing Takeaway

Take my word for it: updating your old content is not an option. Do it.

I am off to update all the numerous posts I linked to in this one.

Updating never ends!