Since the topic of reviving old content was brought up earlier today (from linking to a post from the past), I thought it was only fitting to dig into the SEO archives again to harvest yet another opportunity to drive home a point.
Can Editing Your Pages Produce Organic Rankings?
A website is a work in progress and your own pages represent on of the most underutilized assets in acquiring and defending a stable position across hundreds or thousands of keywords organically. The premise is to edit and revive your content after it has acquired a degree of authority.
You may think, is it necessary to edit entire volumes of content, probably not. In fact most websites have the concentrated link flow for the entire website in 10% of the pages and by adjusting the content and links on those pages, you can pull new pages into the top 10 spotlight. You just have to know where to look to find that 10%.
In addition, depending on your objective, you can fortify your websites rankings drastically from adding fresh links to new content from seasoned pages at any time without invoking a penalty from search engines.
Once you understand this fundamental building block, you can literally start at the bottom of the keyword chain and virtually gobble your way up to the most competitive keywords from gaining topical relevance and keyword stemming as a by-product of website authority.
Each page is like a seedling, once nurtured from traffic, internal links and time (if the balance is optimal) each of those pages grow roots and provide an overlapping continuity for your website.
By managing the process of keywords stemming over time, the topic of the website and the type of traffic you attract and engage, it is possible to create a sphere of influence so pronounced, that search engines appoint your site as an authority.
Depending on the threshold of each industry, some keywords fall easier than others, but ultimately keywords are only a means to an end. They are just mechanisms that people use in order to bridge the gap between their subjective whims and the urge to satisfy them.
Have a great thought about cosmetics? then your going to search for something to satisfy that craving. So, having said that, keywords are potential avenues for driving customers that convert to your pages, but without continuity they will not stick around long enough to make a difference.
Long term vision should be applied if you are serious about the longevity of your website. Content is something that only rewards a website, there is no penalty for creating and managing structured content. In fact, quite the contrary, search engines reward clear and concise information.
The key is to balance the educational needs of your audience with the value it inherently has. Not all people want to be sold (initially), in order to get there for most, it requires credibility. What greater opportunity to once again give search engines what they want as well as attract organic / natural traffic as well.
Revising aged content with fresh links (to other pages in your site or from other sites) is one sure-fire method for inviting the spiders to dine on your pages. If they like the new flavor, they will surely come back again and again to see what is new and crawl your website deeper.
More pages in the index equate to a higher percentage of pages that can pass value and pull other pages up like the buddy system. Many often overlook that chronology dictates that momentum is something that increases gradually over time.
Sites that sit atop their industry invariably had a beginning. I can assure you that there was a time when any site (which is now an authority) barely ranked for anything other than their own name. However, as time progressed and the search engine algorithm became more familiar with the site in question, the relationship fostered and eventually credibility and rankings were bestowed as a result.
A seasoned SEO company or one skilled in SEO optimization knows how to produce this effect through carefully collaborating all of the intricate details involved. The process involves creating and managing a web 2.0 buzz, having stable content that reinforces itself and attracting a larger more targeted audience that is already looking for the benefits your site has to offer.
The Process of Developing Authority
It is merely a matter of time, opportunity and exposure that dictate when and how a site goes from a virtual unknown site to a resource or hub worth noting and sharing with others.
The process is rather straightforward:
- create quality content that encompasses a theme [this may mean hundred or thousands of pages over time]
- harvest every opportunity to reinforce your own pages with pages that have gained a reputation in search engines
- write for readers not search engines so you ensure that your content is engaging and useful and not just manufactured for rankings
You may wonder, in reference to number (2) above, how do you know when a page has gained authority? The answer, it pulls its own weight in search engines and shows up for multiple variations of broad match and exact match keywords found on that page. If you can find a page with 2 or 3 keywords from a title in exact match, then the process has started.
If you can find a page ranking in the top 10 results in search engines for multiple topics for something briefly mentioned on a page, then that page has gained authority and can be utilized as a hub page to spread link flow and rankings to the rest of your site.
The power of editing old content for continuity has never made more sense. Here is a tip you can use to piece together the wiki effect manually. Do this with enough pages and you will have a very strong website to contend with.
- First, check your server logs or analytics for top performing keywords
- If you see related keywords rising in engagement time, lower bounce rates or higher conversion, look for ways to seed other pages with their good fortune
- Run the page with the best conversion through a keyword density tool
- Then, find the keywords with the highest density and co-occurrence on that page, and then link them to related pages attempting to rank for similar keywords (you can use our SEO Tool for free).
Once you know which pages have the strongest on page factors for specific keywords, you can use that align and escalate other pages with a similar theme through using the power of internal linking and relevant keyword anchor text.
Thanks for visiting the SEO Design Solutions Blog, where you can find useful SEO tips and tactics for competitive search engine positioning.
Nice article dude.
Great article. Totally agree with you. Supply and demand will always find profitable long tail keywords to start with and as your site grows then more competitive keywords can be used.
Internal linking is a powerful thing.
Thanks
Mike
Building website authority involves careful planning and a mix of methods. Onee needs to focus on search engines as well as social media sites.