Step 1. List Posts That Are a Year Old
Posted: Tue Dec 24, 2024 6:06 am
Step 1. List Posts That Are a Year Old and Underperforming
To maximize your efforts, it’s best to focus on past posts that are:
At least a year old: If you only published a post a few months ago, it’s probably not worth updating it yet.
Underperforming: That is, they’re not bringing in as much search engine traffic as you’d expect.
Evergreen content: If you wrote a news article two years ago about the latest iPhone, there’s no point updating that post now.
Create a list of these posts—I recommend using a spreadsheet so you’re not relying on memory or a wall of sticky-notes. To find out which posts are bringing in low amounts of traffic, you can use Google Analytics or any similar analytics blogging tool.
In Google Analytics, go to Reports → Enagement → Pages and screens. Set the algeria phone number library in the top right to the time period you want to look at (e.g. the previous month) and you can see your pages listed with their number of page views.
You can reverse-sort this list to bring up a list of the pages with the fewest page views:
Google Analytics Pages and screens report, reverse sorted by number of views
Some of these pages might be search results pages from people searching your site, or things like your privacy policy or the landing page for an old product that you no longer sell. It doesn’t matter if hardly anyone is viewing those pages. Keep going down the list to look for blog posts that are underperforming instead.
Step 2. Review the Keywords Your Post is Ranking For
Next, figure out which keywords your post is ranking for. If it’s bringing in any search engine traffic at all, it’ll be ranking for something!
To find out what keywords your post is ranking for, you’ll need a Google Search Console account. In Google Search Console, you can go to Performance → Search results → Queries to check out the search queries (keywords) your content is ranking for.
In your list of posts, add the keyword(s) that each post is ranking for.
Step 3. Choose a Target Keyword
In many cases, the keyword you choose to target will be the one that your post is already ranking best for in SERPs (search engine results pages). But sometimes, there might be a different target keyword you want to use instead—perhaps one that gets a lot more search engine traffic.
To maximize your efforts, it’s best to focus on past posts that are:
At least a year old: If you only published a post a few months ago, it’s probably not worth updating it yet.
Underperforming: That is, they’re not bringing in as much search engine traffic as you’d expect.
Evergreen content: If you wrote a news article two years ago about the latest iPhone, there’s no point updating that post now.
Create a list of these posts—I recommend using a spreadsheet so you’re not relying on memory or a wall of sticky-notes. To find out which posts are bringing in low amounts of traffic, you can use Google Analytics or any similar analytics blogging tool.
In Google Analytics, go to Reports → Enagement → Pages and screens. Set the algeria phone number library in the top right to the time period you want to look at (e.g. the previous month) and you can see your pages listed with their number of page views.
You can reverse-sort this list to bring up a list of the pages with the fewest page views:
Google Analytics Pages and screens report, reverse sorted by number of views
Some of these pages might be search results pages from people searching your site, or things like your privacy policy or the landing page for an old product that you no longer sell. It doesn’t matter if hardly anyone is viewing those pages. Keep going down the list to look for blog posts that are underperforming instead.
Step 2. Review the Keywords Your Post is Ranking For
Next, figure out which keywords your post is ranking for. If it’s bringing in any search engine traffic at all, it’ll be ranking for something!
To find out what keywords your post is ranking for, you’ll need a Google Search Console account. In Google Search Console, you can go to Performance → Search results → Queries to check out the search queries (keywords) your content is ranking for.
In your list of posts, add the keyword(s) that each post is ranking for.
Step 3. Choose a Target Keyword
In many cases, the keyword you choose to target will be the one that your post is already ranking best for in SERPs (search engine results pages). But sometimes, there might be a different target keyword you want to use instead—perhaps one that gets a lot more search engine traffic.