It is common for people to struggle with getting their content to appear relevant on search engines. Most search engines and their audience prefer relevant and updated content. Most people will ignore older content just by looking at the date. This convinces the search engines to push it further behind since no one is reading it. Even with the right keywords, the content continues to lose its ranking.

For this reason, it is important to clean websites and blog content on a regular basis. But how to do so without affecting keyword rankings? The following are some ways you can do exactly that: 

• Table of Contents

  Toggle

  Get Rid of the Outdated Content 

Auditing website and blog content on a regular basis can help with the cleaning without affecting keyword rankings. It is important to analyse the content to identify the old and new for easy auditing.  

Reasons to audit outdated content: 

• It reduces bounce rate. The users will find the site worth their time and trust the content more. 
• It helps increase organic traffic by bringing the content up in the rankings. 
• It can help the website avoid getting penalised – Search engines, specifically Google, will deliberately push websites down the ranks if it deems the content harmful or inaccurate. 

How to audit outdated content: 

• Analyse and evaluate which content gets traffic and which doesn’t. This is to pinpoint where to improve.  Google Search Console helps identify the performance and traffic of websites. Google Analytics provides an overview of the website and can help sort the outdated content from the relevant. SEO software such as Ubersuggest, Moz and more can help too. 

• Update the content quality and relevance. Analyse competitor sites ranking on the first page for important keywords. Compare their content and improve on your own. Improvement in the title, headings and meta descriptions can help bring the content forward in rankings. 
• Add newer dates to old but relevant information. It can help with the site traffic.  
• Add new information and keywords to optimise the content and the website. Including internal links can help spread the traffic from one blog to another blog throughout the website. 
• Remove irrelevant content which cannot be improved on. Make sure to keep an eye on the Google Search Console and Google Analytics during this process to ensure the auditing does not negatively affect the site rankings. 
• Always keep track of your rankings. This is a continuous process. Monitor the process thoroughly for the best results. 

• Differentiate between Evergreen and Time-Sensitive Content 

Simply deleting old content will not clean the website and blog content without affecting keyword rankings. To optimise the rankings, it is imperative to identify which old content is still relevant and which is not. Evergreen content will retain relevance for years, but Time-Sensitive content will lose its relevance quickly and therefore, will no longer be useful for users. It is important to optimise and keep a balance between both types of content.  

Reasons to optimise Evergreen Content: 

• It increases traffic to the website and blog over time. It is a gradual process, but it works. 
• Other websites will engage with this content as well, mutually bringing up the rankings. 
• This kind of content can be formatted in different ways and repackaged several times. 

Reasons to optimise Time-Sensitive Content: 

• It increases the traffic rapidly and brings in quick revenue. 

• It needs to be constantly updated but because of that very reason, it gets back on the search engine rankings after each update. 

How to optimise on these kinds of content: 

• Update the information, instead of deleting it. This will improve the performance of the site without affecting the rankings. 
• Remove pages and blogs which cannot be updated anymore. Do not forget to implement 301 redirects so that users can be taken to the new and updated pages even when they click on older and obsolete versions. 
• Bring a balance between the two types of content. Do not give preference to one over the other. They can both be equally beneficial for the site traffic and rankings in different ways. 

• Monitor Your Keyword Rankings 

Keywords are crucial to site traffic. Users will interact with blogs and websites more when they are at the top of the search rankings. Most people will not look beyond the first few pages of the search results. Updating keywords helps bring the site up the rankings. Such as if the market aimed towards is the one composed of users looking for the best escape room in Bangalore, it is necessary to use the words ‘escape room’, ‘price’ and ‘Bangalore’ in the keywords for optimum rankings.

Reasons to Monitor Your Keyword Rankings: 

• Updating the keywords helps in maintaining the quality and relevance of the content. 
• Keywords help stabilise your rankings and these need to be monitored to evaluate the traffic received by the website. 

How to Monitor Your Keyword Rankings: 

• You can use SEO tools such as Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, SEMRush and Accuranker to monitor how your keywords are affecting the site traffic. These also keep track of the rankings of your competitors to provide you with a complete picture. 
• Optimise your keywords based on the aforementioned data. This is a continuous process but very successful in the long run. 

• Update the Website Structure 

To clean a website and blog content, sometimes the site structure itself must be updated overall. It ensures that users can effectively engage with the content on the site without any barriers. Bad site set-up can annoy users and reduce traffic. This leads to a dip in rankings. Therefore, cleaning the site structure efficiently is important. 

Reasons to Update Website Structure: 

• It helps make the site attractive. People will engage with the site more when it does not offend their visual faculties.   
• If the content is easier to find and navigate on the site, it will bring in more traffic. 
• Updating the sources can help the site improve users’ trust in the brand. 

How to Update Website Structure: 

• Optimise the site menu, content and sources for easy navigation throughout the site. 

• Remove bad links and redirect the broken ones. This helps users trust the website more and view the relevant content effectively. 
• Optimise the images. Looking at nothing but text is boring. Increase user engagement by including appropriate visuals to the information. 
• Get rid of excessive and duplicate metadata. Each title tag and meta description must be able to stand on its own. This will help bring up the rankings. 

It is necessary to clean up a website or a blog regularly. With the onslaught of newer content taking over rapidly on search engines, it is necessary for websites to update their blogs and optimise user interaction. No user will be satisfied with consistently irrelevant information. Why would they trust your website when they can find more relevant content on other websites?

Conclusion –

Do not give your competitors the chance to snatch your audience away. Optimise your content and website structure to give your users a better experience. But never forget about that one element of vital importance to modern search engine optimization: monitoring your keyword rankings.