How to Recycle Old Content to Extend Value and Maximize User Experience

Is old content bogging down your website? If you’ve been running a business blog for a while, you no doubt have a lot of old articles that have become outdated. Some people think they need to delete content just because it’s old. Other people are happy to simply let their old content be forgotten. Here’s why a better approach is to recycle old content.

No, You Don’t Need to Delete Old Content

Before we dive into why it’s smart to recycle old content, we need to dispel a common myth. Many people think old content will automatically hurt a website’s ranking, so it’s necessary to delete it all. In fact, Search Engine Land says CNET appeared to do this when the company deleted thousands of old articles over fears that the site was being “penalized by the modern internet for leaving all previously published content live on our site.”

However, Search Engine Land argues that such concerns are unfounded. Google does not automatically penalize content just becuase it’s old. A 2023 Twitter (now X) post from Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) makes this clear by explaining, “Are you deleting content from your site because you somehow believe Google doesn't like "old" content? That's not a thing! Our guidance doesn't encourage this. Older content can still be helpful, too.”

A follow up post from Google SearchLiaison explains that if a page has broken links or outdated information “The page itself isn’t likely to rank well. Removing it might mean if you have a massive site that we’re better able to crawl other content on the site. But it doesn’t mean we go ‘oh, now the whole site is so much better’ because of what happens with an individual page.”

So what does this mean for your SEO strategy? Having old articles on your website isn’t necessarily a bad thing in terms of SEO. In fact, having a wealth of content that supports a content cluster strategy can be great for your website’s ranking. However, if you want a particular page to rank well, you may need to refresh it.

Maximizing the Value of Your Website Content Investment

How many times has this scenario happened to you? You have a great idea for a blog post. You write it up (or hire a blog writing service to do it for you), add keywords and metadata, share it on social media, and enjoy a nice surge in your website traffic. But after a while, that traffic fades. A couple of years later, the post is forgotten.

Creating high-quality content requires resources. It stands to reason that once you have great content, you want to get as much value out of it as possible. Simply letting great content become forgotten is NOT the best way to do that.

Although some pieces of content are tied to a specific moment in time, many pieces of content have longer life spans and even have the potential to be evergreen. Unfortunately, these pieces may be buried, and people may not want to share old content, especially if tiny details have become outdated. By refreshing this content, you can squeeze more value out of it.

How to Recycle, Refresh and Republish

Step 1: Update outdated references and statistics.

Even when a topic is evergreen, it’s often normal to refer to details that can date it. For example, you might mention the year. You might reference the current president. You might say something about how the pandemic has impacted business. While these details can make the content feel more relevant in the moment, they can also make it seem outdated after a while, and people may be reluctant to share it anymore even if it still contain good information. This is an easy fix! Just go through and update any outdated references before republishing the content. Statistics also deserve your attention. Some statistics may still be relevant, but others may be outdated. Check for new statistics and update the information when it makes sense to do so.

Step 2: Fix broken links and add internal links.

Over time, your links will break as other sites remove pages or change URLs. While it’s not necessarily a big deal to have a couple of broken links here and there, having a lot of them may hurt the SEO for that page and annoy users. When you recycle content, you can fix those broken links.

At the same time, look for internal linking opportunities. Link to other related articles on your site to create a content cluster.

Step 3: Add new information and fine-tune the SEO.

If you wrote an article a few years ago, you may have new thoughts on the topic. There may also be new developments that you want to mention. When you’re refreshing content, it’s a great time to do that.

While you’re at it, look at how your page stacks up against top ranking content for the target keyword phrase, and take time to bolster your article so it closes gaps, and provides answers for questions you didn’t initially address in the article.

Step 4: Republish the article using a more current date.

You could just write an entirely new blog post. That’s a good option, too, especially if you can put a new twist on the old topic. But this isn’t an either/or scenario. You can write new blog posts AND refresh old blog posts. The nice thing about the latter is that you don’t lose anything. Your old content may have earned backlinks. It may still get a little traffic, whether it’s from those backlinks or from organic search. If you refresh and republish the content while keeping the same URL, you don’t lose any of this. Plus, you have another fresh, current article to promote through other channels like social media and your e-newsletter.

Are You Fueling Your Content Pipeline?

Refreshing and republishing old content is a smart way to maximize your content investment, fuel your content pipeline and bring more traffic to your site – as long as you refresh content the right way. Do you need help building a content strategy? See how Inbound Insurance Marketing can help.