Put on your rubber gloves, and grab the scrub brush. It’s cleaning time. 

Everyone needs to do some heavy-duty cleaning every now and then. We’re talking about addressing that dusty, hard-to-reach shelf in your kitchen, the annoying area between your refrigerator and countertop, and the overflowing mound of sweaters bulging out of your closet.

Everyone needs a little cleaning now and then. The same is true for your content marketing.

Not sure where to start? Keep reading to learn what steps you can take to refresh and recycle your business’s outdated content — creating a better user experience for your audience while also improving your search engine optimization (SEO).

Shouldn’t I Create New Content?

Is it smart to “waste” your time updating old content when you could just create new, fresh content?

While there is definitely a time and place for creating new content, refreshing and resharing content that already exists should be an important part of your marketing strategy.

But what exactly determines whether content is considered old? It’s important to keep in mind that time is perceived differently when it comes to the Internet.

Moz reports that three months is roughly equal to one internet year. This means that your company’s blog posts that have been untouched in two and a half years are considered to be nearly a decade old in internet terms!

When people perform Google searches, Google will try to show users content that is helpful and relevant. In addition to matching keywords, a good indication of relevant content is a recent publish date.

So, if you’re expecting that blog post or landing page you haven’t touched since 2015 to be one of the first Google results, you may want to keep reading.

4 Ways to Recycle and Refresh Content

Not sure how to best refresh and recycle your content? It can feel like a daunting task — but we promise it’s not. 

Let’s outline the four basic steps you can take to spring clean your content marketing!

1. Take a Roll Call of Your Current Content

If you’ve been creating content regularly over the past few months or even years, chances are you have some content pieces you’ve forgotten about. The first step to cleaning up your existing content is to take inventory of the content you already have. 

Start by looking into the analytics of your content. Find out which content pieces currently have the most engagement. Address this content first.

You should also perform an audit of your website, and try to categorize your content to easily see what pieces of content already exist.

As an example: if you’re an auto dealer, content categories could include blogs, landing pages and forms. You can break this down further into content topic categories, like new vehicles, used vehicles, financing, dealership events, auto maintenance, vehicle comparison and overview pages, and more.

After you’ve performed your content audit, you’ll have a good grasp on what you have for existing content. From here, you can determine which content pieces could benefit from a little spring cleaning, as well as determine any content you may be missing.  

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2. Update Your Content While Improving SEO

Give your content a quick read to see if anything jumps out at you that needs to be removed or updated.

For example, if you are reviewing a blog post that mentions a particular lease offer, is the offer still good? If not, update the post with the current offer, or simply remove the old offer from the post if a new offer is not available.

While reading your content, keep your audience in mind. What are you trying to tell them? Is the desired message coming through? Are you answering their questions?

A good indication of whether or not you’re answering these questions is your use of keywords, which are used by Google to help give people the relevant content they’re looking for.

Incorporating keywords within prominent places — such as the title, headers, and meta description — improves your SEO, giving your content more exposure to the right audience.  

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3. Don’t Forget to Refresh Content Format!

In addition to the content itself, the formatting of the content plays a crucial role in the user experience.

As human attention spans continue to decline, creating content that keeps readers engaged has never been more important.

• Break up your paragraphs and embrace the white space on a page. This keeps readers from getting overwhelmed by too much text.
• While written text will most likely make up the bulk of your content, visual content is often more compelling. Add images to your content to support the text.
• While updating your content’s format, test out all in-text links and CTAs. Do they still work? Should the link redirect to a different page? Is your CTA action-oriented?

Don’t lose engagement because of a preventable formatting mistake.

15 Blog Formatting Tips to Increase Your Readers’ Time on Page

4. Recycle Content by Re-sharing on Social Media

You’ve cleaned up your outdated content. Now it’s time to get it back in front of people!

Part of the “refreshing content” process is re-sharing it on social platforms. Not everyone saw your content the first time you shared it, so choosing to re-share your content gives it more exposure to a potentially different group of people.

Re-sharing content can also impact SEO more than you think. Websites with the best rankings on Google tend to have a strong social media presence.

Actively posting quality content on social media can also increase traffic to your website, improve brand recognition, and more!

Let Us Help Spring Clean Your Marketing

We get it. Refreshing content can be a little overwhelming.

At 9 Clouds, we’ve got all the cleaning tools and supplies needed to refresh and recycle your outdated content — helping you rank higher in search results and generate more traffic to your website.

And if you’re serious about improving your content’s engagement and SEO performance, get in contact with us to schedule your digital audit. We’ll show you how to better create content that connects with your audience, generating more leads and revenue for your business.

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