How to update your WordPress posts and why?

How to update your WordPress articles, How to keep the content of your articles up to date? How do you ensure that all the content on your website is always relevant? Why is this important?

For some of you, coming up with new ideas for blog posts seems like the biggest challenge. However, you want your existing posts to display up-to-date content as well, which could be a bigger challenge. In this article, we'll explain why it's worth investing time in having fresh content on your website. We'll also give you some tips on how to achieve this.

But first, if you've never installed WordPress, find out How to Install a WordPress Blog in 7 Steps et How to search, install and activate a WordPress theme on your blog 

Then back to why we are here.

Why is up-to-date content important?

Updating the content is essential because you don't want people to find information on your website that is no longer valid. If you've written a high-quality blog post and optimized it well, there's a good chance people will find this post in the search engines.

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That was the whole point of writing and optimizing this article in the first place. Imagine a blog that distributes SEO advice to its readers by offering them older posts that contain advice that is no longer valid, because you want people to invest time in SEO strategies. SEO that work today.

Why is fresh content important for SEO -REGISTERATION?

Keeping your content fresh is important for SEO reasons. If you rewrite an article, Google will notice changes in that particular article. If you make sure your content is updated regularly, you are actually showing Google that your website is alive. You can either update an article - with or without changing the date - or you can republish it.

Tips on how to keep your content fresh

1. Crucial: update its cornerstones

My most important tip on keeping content up to date is to focus on your "cornerstone" articles. These articles should be the best articles on your website. These are the items you want to be found. So these should be at the top of your list while updating the content.

In Yoast SEO Premium, you now have the option to activate a beta version of the new SEO analysis, including an outdated content filter. This handy feature will let you know if your Cornerstone content hasn't been updated for 6 months or more. At the top of the post overview, you can click on the filter and see which cornerstones you need to update. 

Let us give you an example. We mostly write blogging and SEO content. Regularly, we write a new blog post on these categories. For each of these articles research is done and we discover new things. These new findings are also discussed - briefly - in our articles. It is therefore important to take the time to update our tutorials from time to time.

When working on your Cornerstone articles, or other articles that generate a lot of traffic, we recommend that you use the Yoast Duplicate Post plugin .

Why?

Because it WordPress Plugin allows you to clone your draft article, so that you can work on your article without these changes being displayed directly to visitors. This gives you the opportunity to take your time and update your new content.

Discover how to duplicate a WordPress post and when it can save you time.

2. Update articles that generate a lot of traffic

Updating can be a lot of work. And if your website is getting really big, it could be a daily grind! If you have to make choices about which articles should be updated first, take a look at which pages get a lot of traffic.

Start with those. These are the pages that are actually viewed by your audience. These pages have the highest priority when it comes to offering fresh content.

3. Delete really obsolete items

Since your blog will get older and you will surely write tons of blog posts, some of this content will become outdated. Some items are forever, but others just aren't. If these articles are not read by anyone either, you can decide to delete them completely.

This will clean up your website! But, if you do decide to delete a post, be sure to redirect

4. Merge articles that look very similar

If you publish many articles, you will end up with a few articles that are quite similar. So when you update old content, check to see if you have other posts that look like this. These articles could decrease the chances of ranking for the one you are working on. This phenomenon is called keyword cannibalization.

You can solve it by checking which of these articles is already the best referenced by the search engines. Update it by merging the other articles into this one.

5. Don't forget the “other” pages

Not only should your blog posts have up-to-date content, other pages are important as well. Don't forget to update the FAQs. Perhaps new questions have emerged in your audience. Make sure to add them.

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When updating your website, don't forget the "About page", "Contact page" and other static pages on your website. I understand that this content doesn't change that often, but please make sure changes are made to it.

How do you keep the content fresh?

Keeping your website content up-to-date and fresh is important if you want to attract search engine readers with (a little) older articles. While rewriting and refreshing old content, make sure to start with the most popular cornerstones and posts on your blog.

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Conclusion