Your content deserves a second chance ↗️

Here’s how I update content to revive dead blogs

Make your old content work harder for you

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

Remember the skyscraper technique that stormed the blogging industry in 2015–16?

Yeah, it’s back again. But this time, it’s no BS and a fool-proof method to make your content stand out.

Previously, Google rewarded those who had the lengthiest blog. Now, the most unique content, irrespective of the post length, will be rewarded.

Now, making the content unique is more important than lengthy content.

This begs the question. “How do I make my content unique?”

This post is for you if you regularly update your content on your blog. Here, we will explore seven elements you should update to make your content stand out.

#1 Update Statistics

One of the most common hooks and elements that most blogs include is stats. It works every time.

But the problem is that the numbers change. Often.

Add fresh data to support your claims. If you have a blog purely dedicated to stats alone, you should update all the outdated data points to make your content relevant and helpful for your readers.

Remember, never take data lightly. Based on the numbers you show, someone might always make serious decisions. Be careful with the data.

Action items:

1. Talk to your customers.
2. Use AI to find stats. Verify it manually.
3. Research for surveys, case studies and industry reports.

#2 Include expert quotes

The easiest way you can optimize for E.E.A.T. is to include expert quotes. Sure, this is just borrowing their experience. The post is still not fully optimized for first-hand experience. There’s no replacement for that.

However, while you’re building your authority, it’s okay to rely on well-known experts to quote their opinions around the point you want to make in the blog post.

Action items:

1. Reach out to industry experts on LinkedIn and request their quotes.
2. Dig their interviews/office hours/webinars and collect quotes from there.
3. Invite them for a podcast interview to ask all the questions & prepare a blog post around it.

#3 Expand sub-topics

The internet is expanding. People are asking newer questions. Not long ago, Google said, “15% of all Google searches have never been searched before.”

Image source: Google official X account

When people are searching for newer queries, why would someone in their sane mindset not address those questions in their blog posts?

Action items:

1. Use AI to brainstorm different angles that you might have missed before
2. Dig “People also asked” questions to find questions not answered previously
3. Scan UGC forums like Quora and Reddit to find specific questions

#4 Address common questions

Although Google announced that FAQs will appear on SERPs only for authoritative sites, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t include an FAQ section on your pages.

What about those users who land on your pages via direct or social traffic? You should address their questions, even if they won’t appear on SERPs.

Your customers will always have newer questions that they will never search for on Google.

Identify those questions and answer them as part of the update.

Action items:

1. Talk to your customers and ask if there are any unanswered questions.
2. If you have a sales team, put them to work to find such questions.
3. Check out the comments on social media/blogs for FAQs.

#5 Create custom visuals

I love multimedia for two reasons.

1. Multimedia assets are individually indexable.
2. They’re appealing to visual learners.

From the Image SEO standpoint, identify any section that can be turned into an infographic. Optimize the infographic by including alt text and visual social platforms, especially Pinterest and Instagram.

If you have videos that you can include in the blog post, that’s even better. Embedding YouTube videos on blog pages will increase time on the page. Although that’s not a ranking factor, it’s good to have users on your page as long as possible. That’s the KPI all social media platforms chase.

Why shouldn’t you?

Best part? Good infographics attract backlinks effortlessly.

Action items:

1. Create hand-made flowcharts. Extra points for sharing on social media (referral traffic, anyone?)
2. Create attention-grabbing graphs/bar charts to represent statistics
3. Create videos repurposing the blog and interlink with each other.

#6 Add real-world examples

Startupstory is the best example of this. Pat Walls started Startupstory nearly five years ago, and it’s the best source for finding real-world examples of how startups grow.

Real-world examples make your content so compelling and relatable that readers can’t resist consuming it. Humans love stories, and including real-world examples triggers confirmation bias.

Action items:

1. Use AI to find sources/stories for real-world examples.
2. Check up the news for a story you can include in your post.
3. Find people on social media you can interview for your blog.

#7 Provide actionable next steps

80% of all Google searches are informational keywords. The user's search intent is to find instructions to complete a task.

Almost all blogs that rank on top have clear action items. You know what to do next if you have such Top-of-the-funnel blogs that don’t have action items.

Notice how I have included action items for each element in this post?

Action items:

1. Create a quick checklist for implementing advice.
2. Suggest small experiments that readers can try.
3. List three things readers can do right away.

Ready to update your content?

After the AI took the world by storm, useless content became surplus. The algorithm couldn’t keep up with the AI spam, and Google had to crush down sites that devalued the search engine.

The algorithm updates that are happening right now and those that will happen in future will force business owners to create better content.

As the algorithm updates, it’s your responsibility to update your content accordingly. Not because your content is bad, but because the algorithm wants to rank better content.

That’s called keeping up with the algorithm.

If you want to keep up with changes in SEO verse, I send letters every Saturday where I share industry news, best content from expert SEO creators, and one small tip to grow and monetize your SEO. Consider subscribing to Letters Bydavey for $0.