From the moment online content is published, it goes through stages of growth. At some point, the growth declines, and this dip in traffic for a piece of content is called content decay. This is also referred to as the lifecycle of a piece of content. 

What Is Content Refreshing?

To put it plainly, content refresh is the practice of updating older content to sustain and increase web traffic. 

Typically, there’s a spike right after the initial publication, which levels out over time and eventually reaches a stage of decline. The goal of content refreshing is to reduce traffic decline by reworking the post. This lets you start the content lifecycle all over again, without needing to create new content.

Why Is Content Refreshing Important?  

Content creators know that traffic is essential to success. Consistently creating content contributes to a positive flow of traffic.

But it can be difficult and time-consuming to produce brand new content all the time. Refreshing old content allows you to continue publishing content without having to start from scratch.

In 2011, Google introduced its ’freshness’ algorithm update, which affected over 35% of online content and its rank on the search engine results page. 

Before jumping into the details of content refreshing, here are some reasons why you should be refreshing your content in the first place.

Stay Ahead Of The Competition

One reason for search traffic decline is an increase in competition. This doesn’t necessarily mean more companies to compete with, but perhaps content competitors that have improved their content marketing strategy to better fit trends. It’s important to stay ahead of the competition by updating your content and maintaining your search traffic.

Improve Performance

There are plenty of technical aspects within a website that can influence traffic. Some common technical errors that lead to traffic decline include page load time delay. By reviewing your website’s performance log, you can find key information that pinpoints any technical difficulties causing a drop in traffic.

Reach New Audiences

Content refresh can help get your content in front of new audiences. In doing so, you’ll want to keep your content at an 8th-grade reading level to make sure most people understand it.

If you’re thinking of rewriting content that includes too much industry jargon, try one of these sentence rewriting tools.

How to Find Content to Refresh

To gather the content best suited for a refresh, you need to keep certain factors in mind. The best content to refresh is content that is currently on the decline but still has some recurring traffic. This way you can be sure the content is already relevant and engaging. Once you have your chosen content, you can refresh it in several ways to increase its traffic flow.

Refreshing content is a fairly straightforward process as long as you know what you’re working with. The task could be as simple as adding new information from leading experts or incorporating the latest research into an older post. Or they could be a little more in-depth, such as adding video content to an old written piece, which could add a new dimension to it.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to complete your content refresh:

1. Conduct a Content Audit

Review your current content and its performance. Auditing individual pages will show you what stage your content is in. You can do this manually or with an SEO tool that covers a variety of metrics.

If the traffic for the content has plateaued, add the content to a list to be refreshed. Creating a list of what needs to be refreshed in batches makes for a smoother workflow.

To choose which content to refresh, ask yourself the following questions for your content that’s more than 12 months old:

• Is the post underperforming for its target keywords?
• Do you have the domain authority to be able to rank higher?
• Are there other posts outranking yours?

If you answered yes to each of these questions, you’ve identified content that can be refreshed!

2. Identify Any Content Gaps

In each of the old pieces of content you’ve identified for a refresh, consider what could be changed or added. You might want to ask yourself the following for each content piece:

• Does it have up-to-date research and references?
• Is there room for more long-tailed keywords?
• Could the title or headers be improved?
• Are there quotes from industry experts on this subject?
• Could more/better outbound links be included?
• Should it be merged with related content?
• Is there a way to make the content evergreen?
• Are you using the right target keywords?
• Could the meta description be optimized?

This is a good time to identify any topics in your existing content roster that could be transformed into fresh content. Save these topics for when you switch over to a content creation workflow.

3. Update and Refresh the Content

The last step is updating and refreshing the content. You can complete this in a variety of ways depending on what type of content you’re working with. Follow your answers to the previous questions to determine what can be updated and where. 

Use Jasper’s Content Improver Template

Jasper’s Content Improver template aims to rewrite your content to make it sound more interesting, creative, and engaging.

Use SurferSEO’s SEO Audit Tool

SurferSEO is an SEO tool capable of increasing your traffic by assessing your content based on search engine ranking factors.

Surfer’s ability to improve traffic flow and refresh content quickly makes it easier for refreshed content to grow and get better. The SEO Audit Tool aims to help you:

• Discover which important terms your page is missing
• Analyze ranking factors for specific pages
• Choose which competitor content pieces to beat
• Identify opportunities to add internal links

How Jasper and SurferSEO Help Refresh Content Faster

Jasper and SurferSEO are tools specifically designed to help create content faster while increasing website traffic—this means that not only will your new content be developed at a higher quality and efficiency, but your old content can be refreshed and revamped even faster than before! 

Jasper is an AI tool with the ability to produce original, high-quality content. As a copywriting AI, Jasper’s 52+ templates allow you to rewrite content efficiently, without losing any context, keeping your content fresh and up-to-date for SERPs.

Jasper’s Boss Mode integrates with your Surfer SEO account to produce the SEO content you need. When used together, Jasper and Surfer offer you an easy process to:

• Quickly find keyword opportunities
• Refine your content’s readability, tone and SEO potential
• Discover the perfect headings

While integrated, Jasper and Surfer SEO work side-by-side to create an efficient refresh process. This gives you a quick live reference for keywords you’ve used, your current content score, content metrics, and more while you’re working.

‍Sign up for Jasper today to help your content reach its full potential.