Digital Marketing

How To Rank Your Old Content With New Keywords

Do old blogs and articles lose value after some time? Of course, they do as people move on to reading fresh and relevant content to keep pace with the changes and developments in their industry and niche. However, it is hard to give up on the content pages you created after so much of time-consuming research and efforts.

The good news is that your old content need not be lost amidst new reams of fresh content. It can still be of great value to your marketing strategy.

It is normal for people to focus solely on creating new content to gain rankings and boost visibility. However, updating old content and refreshing existing pages is an option that can be easily applied to improve the SEO and make your site rank high again on Google.

This is a strategy that is gaining in popularity among marketers. There are many reasons for updating old content.

  • Creating high-quality content is a tough and time-consuming task
  • Refreshing existing content can help you focus on other vital tasks if you have a small team
  • With competition getting tougher and the field of players getting broader, you need to find and quick and effective way to rank high

Re-optimizing the existing content pages that you had so painstakingly created might be just the kind of strategy you need to be back in the game again.

If the focus is on on-page optimization, you will surely be aware of the importance of keyword research. Adding Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords and doing it right, is a great way of re-optimizing old content and bringing it on the top of search results. It is an effective SEO strategy that’s gaining in popularity and is being increasingly used for achieving an organization’s digital marketing objectives.

LSI keyword is a strategy that’s being followed by Google and many other search engines for comparing the relationship between different terms. When such keywords are added to your content, it can definitely help improve the SEO traffic on your old post.

Before we go any further, let’s find out what LSI Keywords are:

What are LSI Keywords?

We are all aware that when you put any search query on Google, it returns some keywords. The words and phrases that are highlighted in the search results are the ones most relevant to the original keywords. They are merely the extension or expansion of the terms used for search.  These terms can help boost the search rankings of your content.

How To Use LSI Keywords In The Description

Does your old content have a good Meta description? It can help you increase the traffic to your website and also in optimizing your content.  An effective way of doing this is to add keywords in the description. It must be done in such a way that your page gets a higher priority from the search engines and hence improved rankings. Using fresh keywords in the old content can make the pages appear as fresh and will get ranked in the top search results of Google.

Can You Add The Keywords Anywhere Else?

The LSI keywords can be added in the title and description and also in the old content. This is a proven way of boosting SEO without having to put in more time and effort in creating fresh and unique content pages.

Add The Main As Well As LSI Keywords

Adding only the keywords will not deliver the desired SEO results. You will only end up stuffing the page with the main keyword which is highly undesirable. Also, it is important to note that semantic keywords can never replace the main keywords. At the same time, they are bot important for your content to gain ranking. They must both exist in your content to be able to achieve your SEO goals. A few points of vital importance here:

  • Never overstuff keywords
  • Make sure you add only two semantic phrases or keywords. This strategy works best for optimizing search results
  • More stuffing might attract penalties from Google for spamming so resist the temptation.

Your Best Latent Semantic Keyword Must Come Up in Search

When a keyword is used for searching something on Google, the search engine will come up with the best semantic keywords. The keywords or phrases that are highlighted as semantic keywords will be seen on the search page. These are the keywords that must be used to push your old pages up in the searches.

  • There are many free as well as premium tools available to help you find the semantic keywords
  • You can make use of tools such as Google Ad Words, LSI Keyword Generator, LSI Graph, and others for the same

Rest assured that these tools are user-friendly and can be handled even by those who are not tech-savvy. They can come handy in helping you find LSI keyword suggestions.

How To Add LSI Keywords to Supplement the Keyword Phrase

Making old and seemingly irrelevant content pages come alive and putting these pages back in contention among Google searches can be easily achieved by adding the latent semantic keywords to your original keyword. Once this is done properly, you can start working on your ranking strategies to get these pages on the top pages of Google search.

The strategy works on the simple and proven premise that Google considers re-optimized pages as fresh content and gives it a chance to rank high on search engine results. If you are not sure how to add new keywords to your old and dead content, make sure you consult an SEO expert. They can ensure that the addition of new keywords and LSI keywords is done accurately while not straying outside the optimization rules and guidelines established by Google.

Things to remember:

  • It is important to retain the primary keyword phrase in the content and supplement it by using one LSI keyword
  • By doing this, you will be able to get a better rank for the old content again. This can help drive more traffic to your website.

Image Optimization

When you refurbish the old content, you must also optimize the images on these pages. This can be done by optimizing the images. Rename the old images with the new LSI keywords to add more punch to your pages. It is a simple but effective way of bringing the dead images back to life.

Do More With Less

With millions of pages posted online daily, getting your page on the top page of search results can be a formidable task for most marketers. It involves the use of sophisticated technologies and processes and of course, some stiff investment as well.

Optimizing your existing content by adding keywords can spell great news for your ROI efforts.

In stark contrast to that, your older content that has dropped off the radar can be quickly put back into reckoning by simply adding new keywords. As your old content and pages were already successful, this task can be done with relative ease if you follow the right steps. New posts and pages have to do a lot more to get a favorable rating from Google. Your old content might not have to do all that heavy lifting.

A closer look at your web analytics will reveal the obvious – that a large percentage of your traffic comes from the older content. All it will take is some effort to get those pages to breathe again. A few keywords is all it takes to bring in more visitors. You literally are doing more with less. 

There is less effort involved in reusing existing content than to develop something from scratch and then to put it through the long-winding and complex search engine optimization process. And yet, there is no real guarantee that your pages will make it to the top search results.

Re-optimizing your old content is a smart and cool way of nudging through the crowd and reclaiming your stated place on the top pages of Google results. It is like publishing a brand new post without going through the trouble of creating one. How cool is that!!!

So are you now all set to give a second life to your old content pages?

Conclusion

Creating high-value and informative content that can help improve the ranking of a site is a hugely challenging task. It not only involves intense research but also some basic knowledge of how SEO works. For those posting fresh content, the job is relatively easy as they simply have to follow the established guidelines for search engine optimization. For those trying to get a higher ranking for old dead content, the challenges are more formidable.

By adding new keywords to existing content you can achieve many things – give it fresh life, add variety to your content, and make it visible in Google SERPs. The icing on the cake is that the results are pretty quick.

The addition of keywords to old content can boost the SEO traffic to your website. More importantly, it helps enhance the relevancy of your content in the search results.

Asheesh M Jain

Asheesh is a marketing strategist with over 15 years of experience in online marketing management. Asheesh is a content marketing enthusiast with a focus on content promotion using owned, paid, earned, and shared media channels. He is data driven marketer who helps businesses build and grow their online footprint and generate maximum ROI from their marketing budgets.

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