Reduce, reuse, and recycle the content that you have already produced

Natalie says: “Don't neglect the power of reducing, reusing, and recycling content that already exists. This doesn't mean just content on your site, but any kind of content that you've produced.”

Are these all part of the same thing or would you apply them to different pieces of content separately?

“It varies. One way to look at it is to think about it as part of your traditional content audit – and to think about content decay. A lot of people talk about content decay and think about whether to remove or repurpose content when you're using a content audit template. A lot of the content auditing templates out there refer to keep, remove, reuse, etc. This is the kind of depth that you can go to.

However, we're not just looking at the content audit itself. We’re also looking at other things around it. It's aimed at all different kinds of businesses. It can be applicable whether you're seeing the signs and impact of content decay already, whether you have been hit by a helpful content audit or a content quality audit, whether you’re worried about either of those things, or whether you just want to gain a competitive advantage over your competition.”

How do you determine what needs to be done?

“With reducing, you’re thinking about whether you want to remove the content altogether rather than shortening it. When you're auditing content, there are some very long guides on the web that might be better off split into separate articles, for example. You might have created that long guide as a piece of skyscraper content for link acquisition or to try and rank for as many keywords as possible. Now, intent is so important, and making sure that there is a clear intent for a piece of content is key.

If you've got a massive piece of content, the intent might be confusing – not just for Google but also for the user. That’s especially true if things like the H1 and heading don't align with what is actually covered in the article. Look at what is covered in that piece and think about what you want the intent to be, then consider whether everything in that article meets or fulfils that intent. If it doesn't, are there ways that you can break that content down into separate pieces that fulfil their own intents?

The user might be looking for more informative and educational content at the top of the funnel, but you've got a lot of conversion-led content on that page. You need to think about whether you should have that piece of content as something more educational, with clear calls to action for conversion points, then create a separate conversion-led piece for the user to approach when they're at the bottom of the funnel. Obviously, the user that's going to be hitting your site could be at any stage. They might come back to your website, or they might not, but you need to make sure that the intent of that content is aligned. That is the first thing to have a look at and see whether you can split that piece of content up or refresh it.”

Do you still look at things like whether the URL has been indexed, whether the page gets any traffic, or whether it has any backlinks?

“That would be part of it. Besides looking to see whether this content needs to be refreshed or not, content audits are key and there are loads of different templates out there that you can use. If you’re agency side, you might be able to use a template that's standard in your agency or you might be able to get some from different sources across the internet and tweak them to make it your own.

While you're doing this, make sure that you don't just look at search content. Look at search and social content, and look at search and social stats as well. That will allow you to then pick and prioritise what you do or don't want to optimize and keep.

Then you're asking, should this piece of content be indexed? Is it indexed? How much traffic is it getting? How many keywords is it ranked for? How many shares on social has it had? Has it got any traffic from other sources, like email? You also want to look at things like whether that piece of content has acquired any backlinks.

Then, on top of your content audit, you may also want to analyse the content for EEAT. Again, there are some really good templates out there Aleyda Solis’ one is fantastic. Make the existing content, and also any new content, meets those EEAT guidelines. That includes making sure you've got quotes. Look at what your competitors are doing and do better than them by adding in your own business insights, etc. Those are the kinds of things that are included in those EEAT templates.

However, it's really key to look at how your current content is performing. It might not be indexed but it might be getting some social traffic. That gives you an insight. It tells you that the content is helpful but, at the same time, there might be an additional reason why it isn't in Google. For example, it could accidentally have a noindex on it, or it might be missing something key that all of your competitors offer. It's down to you to figure out how you are going to get this content indexed and how you are going to add value to it from there.”

Do you determine whether or not that piece of content is providing value to your user by comparing it against the EEAT guidelines?

“Partly, but there are a lot of additional things that you need to consider here. For example, if you've got a customer service or customer support department in your business, there's a lot of value to get from there.

However, it is really important that your content meets those guidelines, and there are lots of different ways that you can make sure that it does. You can add your own insights and sure that, if you speak about a study, you link to that study. These are simple little things that you can do to make sure that you're supporting what you're saying. It's like writing an essay at university. If someone were to mark that, they would be asking where you got that information from.

Obviously, a lot of people are talking about LLMs at the moment. A phrase that I often use is about how LLMs are stochastic parrots and humans are not – meaning they are good at generating convincing language, but they do not actually understand the meaning of the language they are processing. Emily M. Bender wrote a fantastic article about it that you should read, and she coined this phrase.

Basically, you need to make sure that whatever you say is supported and that you’re not just linking to things but bringing in quotes from authoritative sources – like someone in your business or an external person of interest.

Tereza Litsa gave a really fantastic talk at BrightonSEO about providing value and how to maintain the human element while using AI for content marketing. We're talking about good quality, helpful content, with the deluge of LLM-generated content that’s flooding the internet at the moment. Even if you do create content with an LLM (with ChatGPT, Bard, Jasper, etc.), how are you providing that human value within that piece of content?

At the end of the day, it’s all about whether your content provides value. Does it meet intent? Is it quality? That's not just from an SEO standpoint, but also thinking about it being shared across multiple channels. If you’re wondering how to tell whether a piece of content is good enough quality, ask yourself whether you would be confident sharing that piece of content on your CEO's LinkedIn profile. Why? It should be cross-channel too. You need to be creating content that serves beyond SEO as well.”

How often do you review your content?

“It depends. I've worked for lots of different businesses and, to build a workflow, we usually make sure to look at content at least once a year. Have a look and see whether that piece of content has been refreshed within the year and, if not, whether it needs refreshing.

Refreshing a piece of content doesn't mean changing that date. Google are clamping down on that because a lot of people have been getting away with it for too long. Look at things like search trends and how different phrases have changed. Look at social trends. There are lots of different ways that you can refresh that content.

Overall, you should look at it on a yearly basis, but you should also keep an eye on trends related to your business or your niche. Use tools like Google Trends, Exploding Topics – and AlsoAsked to see how People Also Ask questions and queries have changed. If there's been a demand increase related to the topic your article was about, you may need to add a paragraph or include a subheading about that, and build it into your article, to provide that extra value so that you're not left behind.”

Is it ever worthwhile focusing on evergreen content that you never have to update?

“Even evergreen content should be refreshed, because things change. If you were creating an evergreen content piece about what SEO is, SEO changes a lot. You might have created a piece of content explaining what SEO was a few years ago, and you may want to have that on your website. However, because of the competitive landscape and changes in searcher's needs and the search ecosystem, even the content that you think is more evergreen should be refreshed.

Even evergreen content suffers from content decay. It's such a dynamic world, and your competitors are always going to be looking at you. If you look at bigger players in the financial publishing space, like NerdWallet, they continue to update their evergreen guides. Of course, not everyone has their budget or their SEO focus, so you need to make sure that you prioritise the correct pieces of content and what provides value.

If you see any decrease in traffic or rankings, or you see specific pieces that have been affected by an update, then focus on those. Then, think about prioritisation and what your business aims (or your client’s business aims) for the year are. Take those pieces of content and prioritise them.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2024?

“Stop putting out rushed, poor-quality content that provides little to no value. Focus on what provides value – not just from an SEO standpoint, but for content that is going to be shared across multiple channels.

If you’re putting out five short, unresearched, poor-quality pieces of content that don't fulfil any search intents or answer the searcher's questions, they're not going to rank well. Reduce that to one or two pieces of content that are really great quality, rather than rushing content out just to tick the boxes.”

Natalie Arney is a Freelance SEO Consultant, and you can find her over at NatalieArney.com.