New Year, New Chance to Update Your Old Site Content
Many webmasters spend time updating their blog, news section or product pages throughout the year. They often spend a lot of time focusing on building new pages as well. But when was the last time you did a detailed review of your Contact Us page? It doesn’t take long for pages like this to become outdated or irrelevant. You might find you even have some downright incorrect information.
With a new year at hand, it’s the perfect time to go through your important but neglected business pages with a fine-tooth comb. Keep these things in mind when giving your site content the once over.
Watch Out For Thin Content
Pages such as Our Team, Contact Us and affiliate pages notoriously fall into the realm of thin content. This type of content is highly frowned upon by Google, and the Panda algorithm will no doubt cause you to rank poorly in the search results pages because of it. Correcting thin content isn’t just about appeasing Google, however. If your site content is thin, you’re not providing value to your visitors and you’re probably losing business because of it.
Thin content can include articles copied from other sites, content copied from other pages on your site, overly repetitive or wordy writing, or pages with too many ads or superfluous images. Content that’s simply too short to be valuable can also be considered thin. Taking the time to expand this content in a valuable way will improve your site tremendously.
If you’ve used an SEO company or have hired content writers in the past, you may be especially vulnerable to thin content problems such as keyword stuffing or doorway pages. In these cases, you’ll have to…
Undo Outdated SEO
By now, anybody who takes content writing seriously knows that keyword stuffing is poor form. It sounds clunky and confusing to readers while potentially getting your site penalized. Take a good look at any of your pages that haven’t been touched in over a year. If any of your site content has keyword phrases that are awkwardly shoehorned-in, this definitely warrants some change. There’s no need to get too bogged down in keyword density these days either. If a keyword phrase is repeated so much that it sounds unnatural, it must be edited down.
Also, it’s now considered best practice to avoid too many optimized or exact match anchor texts when linking to other parts of your site. For example, say you run a wedding supply shop as well as a wedding-related blog. In years past, having a ton of anchor texts such as “wedding supplies” and “wedding rings” linking to your site could give you a serious boost in search rankings. Now, however, having too many links from your blog to your main site using anchor texts that look suspiciously beneficial can end up getting you a manual penalty. This is the example Google gives:
There are many wedding rings on the market. If you want to have a wedding, you will have to pick the best ring. You will also need to buy flowers and a wedding dress.
If a ton of your internal links look like this, simply take some of them out or change the anchor text.
Spelling, Grammar, Tone, Message
You probably see your site every day, so it’s likely you’re overlooking some simple mistakes. Try to analyze your site content with new eyes, especially on older pages. You might be surprised at the number of spelling and grammar mistakes you find or the amount of company information that needs to be updated. Also, make sure all of your pages have a tone and message that’s consistent with your current mission. Content created over a year ago might end up confusing your readers if the tone is overly comical, serious or sales-oriented in a way that doesn’t reflect the tone most of your other pages currently take.