How to Rank Your Old Content (And Start Ranking for Hundreds Of New Keywords)

If you want more search traffic everyone's going to to tell you that you need to keep creating more and more content. But there's already a billion blogs on the web. That's roughly one blog for every seven people. There's too much content! You know what you should do if you want more traffic? You rank your old content. Today I'm going to share with you how you can rank your old content.

RESOURCES & LINKS:
____________________________________________

____________________________________________

The first thing I want you to do is use Google Search Console and Ubersuggest and combine them together.

So with Google Search Console, you're going to see your traffic over time, per page.

What I want you to look for is your old articles that are dipping. Your old articles that are dipping and getting less and less traffic over time, that means they need to be refreshed and updated.

So what I want you to do is look at those articles that are dropping in traffic in Google Search Console, take those keywords that that article's ranking for and put them within Ubersuggest.

It'll tell you all the other phrases, long-tell versions that get traffic.

Now, I want you to go back to that article that Google Search Console showed is losing traffic.

That old, outdated piece of content. Look at it, and be like, Hm, what can I do to make this page better? What's outdated? What needs to be removed? What needs to be fixed?

By using Ubersuggest you can look at all the other long-tell phrases, the question and answers.

The second thing I want you to do is work on improving your click-through rates through your title and meta description tags.

So there's this tool out there called ClickFlow. And what ClickFlow does is just only helps you optimize your title tag and meta description click rates.

It's a simple thing to do but very few SEOs do it. Remember, just because you rank number two or three or five on Google doesn't mean that you need to rank higher to get more traffic.

But you can't just make a change and expect it to miraculously work. ClickFlow will guide you and it'll tell you what changes to make in your title tag and your meta description to maximize your click-through rate.

The third thing I want you to do is to delete your old articles that no longer are relevant.

For example, I had articles on my blog related to Vine. Twitter shut down Vine. I could update it, but what's the point of updating an article on a service or a company that no longer exists.

So, I don't want you to just delete your old content that's irrelevant anymore, that can't be updated.

I want you to take those articles and 301 redirect them to the most relevant articles.

That way you're pushing more juice into the more relevant ones, and they rank better.

The next thing I want you to do is push more internal links to your older articles.

As you write newer content you forget about your older pieces of content. Those gems that still can do well.

So I want you to take all these new pieces of content that you're writing and link to the old articles when it makes sense.

The fifth thing I have for you is embed multimedia into your old articles.

Look, nowadays there's videos, podcasts, there's infographics, on whatever you have written about in the past.

So take some of these pieces and integrate them into your old articles. It brings new life to them. Makes them more fresh. And best of all, it improves your time on site, reduces your bounce rate.

It tells Bing and Google, hey, this page, people love it. It has amazing user metrics, maybe we should rank it higher.

The sixth thing I want you to do is adjust the last updated date for your old pieces of content.

So if your old pieces of content were in five years ago and you make a ton of changes, you should adjust the day when that article was updated and notify Google.

This is easy to do within WordPress. If you don't have WordPress, it's going to vary per CMS, but by updating the date that it was updated or published, what you'll find is Google will be like, wow!

So as you update it, you can see who is sharing your competitor's articles that are similar. You can go to that URL, put it into Twitter and see who tweeted it out, and ask them to tweet it.

And by breathing new life and marketing your old content again and again, it's going to improve this rankings, right?

#SEO #NeilPatel #DigitalMarketing

[neilpatel]

Have you seen an old piece of content outperforming new content pieces on your website?

[SEOProf]

Updating old content and marketing again and again is an interesting way to avoid going off-topic, in particular for tiny niches or countries (like Italy). Thanks Neil from your *Italian follower*!

[readoak]

Thank you Neil! That's exactly what I've been working on lately. However, after watching your video about How to Rank Old Content, made it much easier and gave me other great ideas I haven't think of. You're awesome!

[foxruneec]

Today I was doing some research for an article I was writing and realized the top spot was held by a blog originally published in 2015. It was obvious they had updated it and it was full of great information. I think this strategy is very important and reminds me to keep updating content to keep organic traffic flowing.

[jamesscott]

Excellent 👍 I’m gonna coin this.. Neil Patel’s Resurrection Technique. Thanks Neil 👍 time to tend the garden... and pull some weeds out. 🚀 🚀 🚀

[dennychristian]

Thanks Neil, I did what you suggest in this video and I begining to see traffic come back in my old outdated blog article that used to be good in Google but losing a lot of traffic . greeting from Indonesia.

[ElliotScottDating]

Holy Moly I hope you answer this simple question I can't find an answer to:


I want to rewrite an old article and change the title. For example, instead of saying, "X ways to get a guy to like you" I might say, "The Ultimate Guide On Getting A Guy To Like You", will that lower the rank temporarily for that article despite it being 10x better? Thank you so much.

[Mohamed-]

This video is amazing. Am going to take notes. Thank you Neil

[ghazalm]

How do I find out who is sharing a similar article by a competetitor.. is there a tool you would recommend?

[HolisticADHDCoach]

Awesome! Exactly the tips I’ve been looking for right now! Follow-up question - what about publishing articles that include content from podcast episodes last year? So the article is new but the podcast is ‘old’ should I date the publication date based on the article or the podcast publication date?

[LydiaSugarman]

Hey, Neil, I'm not clear on #2 regarding deleting/not deleting old content and redirecting to newer content. What does that look like?

[InuEtc]

Hey Neil,

Thanks for sharing these useful informations.

Keep sharing!

Thanks!

[s.roobel]

But my question is to you Boss, when a revamp content (altered both by structurally + length) outperforming the old piece, will the old backlinks or other such factors work as usual? When contents have been revamped, 3 out of 14 got the rank within just 9 days. I came to know that a broad change has been made by google on the first week of this running month.

[PankajKumar-olnm]

Hi, Neil plz make a video on Google tag.

[InvestingEducation]

Thanks for the helpful advice in growing my investing channel

[michaelx]

Hey Neil you are awesome
...please make video about selecting a perfect focal keyword

[sinhascreations]

Helpful content Thank you for sharing.

[sanjayhota]

neil, i am using ubersuggest from 6 month, thanks a lot for free seo tool, and i have a question for you. Is estimate visits Section working properly.

[VishalChaudhary]

Hi Neil, could make one video about native marketing and Quora ads?

[MrTATO]

Very good video greetings from Cartagena Colombia