This guide will give you all the tools you need to increase the overall performance of your site by targeting low performing articles. The following steps will show you how to find those articles and how to update them.
Step 1. Find the right articles that need an update
The first step is very important. You must find the lowest performing articles on your site so that the whole performance of the site will increase. You can find those pages by doing a report with page views for a period of time(For example, 1 month).
This report can be done with the Google Analytics tool or a similar one. Let’s say that on average you have 100 views per post for a month. Therefore, a post with 10 views for that month would be a low performing one.
Step 2. How to figure out what update you need to do
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- Do a keyword research
The first thing you need to do when you have found the article that needs an update is to carry out a keyword research. Start the process by searching for the keywords you’d like to rank for.
At the end of each SERP list, you will have suggestions from Google. These suggestions are basically what users have searched for after this search. You can get some good ideas from there. Also, you can use great tools such as SEMrush for your keyword research.
- Do a keyword research
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- Group keywords by intent
The intent is what users are actually looking for when they have typed in the specific keyword. If you search for a keyword and all the results don’t have that word, it shouldn’t surprise you.
Google bot has seen that when users search for this keyword, then they click on other results because their intent was different. SERP pages are based on what users are clicking on. User intent is the most important SEO factor in 2019.
Some keywords may look that they have the same intent, but the search results can show you that they have a different intent. Here is an example of how to group keywords by user intent:
We want to update an article about packing a guitar with the title “Packing a Guitar for Shipping Tips”. The keywords that we want to appear for in the search results are:
- How to pack a guitar for shipping;
- How to pack a guitar for moving;
- How do you pack a guitar for shipping;
- Packing a guitar for shipping;
- Packing a guitar for shipment;
- Best way to pack a guitar;
- Best way to pack and ship a guitar;
- How much does it cost to ship a guitar;
- Cheapest way to ship a guitar;
- How to pack a guitar for moving without a case;
- How to ship a guitar without a case;
Now let us group all of them by user intent:
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- How much does it cost to ship a guitar and Cheapest way to ship a guitar: Here, the user is looking for prices. The searcher wants to know how much it will cost them to ship a guitar from point A to point B. Also, what factors will affect the price.
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- How to pack a guitar for moving without a case and How to ship a guitar without a case: Here, the user is looking for tips for shipping a guitar without a case.
- How to pack a guitar for shipping, How to pack a guitar for moving, How do you pack a guitar for shipping, Packing a guitar for shipping, Packing a guitar for shipment, Best way to pack a guitar and Best way to pack and ship a guitar: All of these keywords have a similar intent. Here, the user is looking for complete how-to guides on packing a guitar for shipping.
- Group keywords by intent
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- Pick an intent you want to approach
Now let’s pick a group of keywords from the previous step. Our main content will be written around them. Also, you can write a few sentences in which you can mention some or all of the keywords from the other groups.
The more results the article appears for, the bigger the chance of a user clicking on it. Explore the results for each of the keywords from the main group. Look at what is ranking in the top results and what is the structure of the content of these sites.
Look for similarities in the content and the structure. For example, if most of the top results have a video at the beginning of their pages, you can have one as well.
- Pick an intent you want to approach
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- Make the content readable and scrollable
If the first thing a user sees is a big chunk of text, it is almost a 100 % guarantee that the back button will be pressed, especially if that user is trying to read the article on а mobile device.
Try dividing your text into small paragraphs and add pictures so that you can keep the reader’s interest. When your article is accessed, you have only 7 seconds to grab the attention or the back button will surely follow.
Try to emphasize parts of your text by making them bold. For example, if you have paragraphs with lists, bold the beginning of each list item to make the text scrollable.
- Make the content readable and scrollable
- Updating small things will make a big difference
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Title – Try to use a strong keyword for your title, but don’t overstuff it with keywords. The title should be under 60 characters long or to be exact, the limit is based on a 600-pixel container.
Including question words, the current year or current month, words such as “the best guide for ….” and “top tips for ….” are all words that can surely grab the user’s attention when your article appears in the search results.
For example, an article with the title “Packing a Guitar for Shipping Tips” can be changed to “How to Pack a Guitar for Shipping”.
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Meta description – This provides a summary of your article and Google may display it under your title in the SERP pages. It should be between 50-160 characters.
To craft an effective description, focus on readable and actionable text (use action words like get, profit, do and emotional words like ultimate, exhaustive, the best).
Remember, we need to make people click on the result when they read it rather than try to fool the search engine with keyword stuffing.
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- Date of publishing – Don’t forget to change the date of publishing when you publish the updated version of the article. Google can see it as fresh content and may rank it higher than older articles. Also, Google Bot will crawl it faster.
- Picture optimization – Be careful when you are adding pictures to your post. Make sure that the size that you are showing is the actual size of the image.
Changing the title of the page is most effective when that page ranks on 1st page for some of the keywords. Why is that?
Well, titles are the first thing users see. So, if it does not rank on 1st page, it will be very unlikely that someone sees the new title and takes action.
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Step 3. Keep track of your progress
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Identify the current positions of the article – Find the positions of your post for the keywords you want to rank for.
You can do that by making a table with the date, the keyword and the current position of the article. Also, make screenshots so that you can see if the user intent has changed or not.
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- Help Google Bot crawl your article faster – You can use Google Search Console to request indexing for your page. That way, your article will be updated faster in the SERP pages.
Different kinds of articles
There are different kinds of articles. For example, guides typically consist of step by step guidelines on how to do something. Some posts may have only a video at the beginning and a small portion of text after it.
Other articles such as pages full of tips when doing something can be structured with bullet lists, for where each bullet can be a different tip.
Understanding and making a difference between the variety of different articles is very important. When doing your keyword research, if you don’t know what the article structure is in the results, you won’t know what update to do and how to do it.
After the update is completed and the article is published, wait a while before checking the result of the update. For example, after 2 weeks you can check to see if there any change in the positions.
When the time that you have set is over, you can open and fill again the table with the new data and compare it to the old. See if the update has been successful and whether or not the article will need another update.
