Today’s Ask An SEO question comes from Nick asking:
“Which period makes the most sense for a content check? My traffic changes based on Google algorithm updates and there is also some seasonality. Should I use a year’s worth of performance data to inform my strategy, or would it be better to use smaller chunks of data?”
Good question Nick!
There is no right or wrong answer to when a content review should be performed as each website is unique, but there are signals that it is time to perform a content review.
And an annual performance audit doesn’t hurt either.
One thing to watch out for is changing things just because you have a transient thing, a C-suite manager is panicking due to seasonality, or there’s jitter during a search engine update.
When search engines like Google update, they often roll back and good content and pages come back.
Don’t rely on updates as a sign that it’s time to review your content exclusively.
Use this instead:
- When traffic has plateaued and good pages that should rank don’t. (After solving technical and structural problems)
- Content that has always been at the top positions has slipped or started to slide, and your content is on par with the pages you are replacing.
- When peak season is six to seven months away and you don’t have your leaderboard.
- Annual evaluations by category and page.
plateau traffic
If traffic is flat but you’ve been adding content regularly for a while, it’s a good idea to take a step back and look at the content you’re posting.
If you’re not getting new traffic, do you already have a page that’s getting the same type of traffic from SEO?
If so, change the subject and find new things that can draw in your audience while staying relevant to your core products, services, and offerings.
You don’t want to cannibalize the working page(s). But don’t just look at SEO traffic and keep writing about the same topic — look at your user base and audience.
Have people on social media stopped sharing and clicking through to your pages?
When this happens, you’re probably posting topics that aren’t interesting to your user base, or you’ve overdone those topics and they’re fed up with the same thing.
Check out other types of content that meet the needs of the same user base.
That said, if your target is single dads with younger daughters and you sell books, think of other “single dad issues.” It could be hairstyling, planning birthday parties, shopping for clothes, introducing your daughter to your new significant other, etc.
Each of these topics has matching books that will allow your content to be cross-sold and provide solutions to your audience’s needs. And the themes allow you to collaborate with influencers in your niche and create cross-promotional marketing campaigns with complementary businesses.
This in turn increases visibility and can lead to natural backlinks.
It’s a big win and can help grow your traffic back to relevant audiences while feeding other channels and helping your business grow across the board.
As an SEO professional or copywriter, you can become a hero and earn a seat at the marketing planning table.
Pages and categories that slip
If you find that pages or categories on your site are slipping, this is a good time to check them out.
But don’t just start dragging, cropping and rewriting. First look at:
- What replaced you in the search results?
- What topics do they cover that you don’t? Think about how you can naturally incorporate them into your own content if they are relevant.
- How many backlinks and internal links do they have when their page gets “real” media coverage? Why do they get it and you don’t? When do they prioritize their content? Do they give it a boost with additional signals from internal links (particularly from sites with quality backlinks)?
- Do you have the right schema and page structure and your pages load fast and provide solutions?
- Has anyone posted similar content on your site that might compete? Use an SEO tool to group a keyword cluster, then see if multiple pages on your site show up for them. If you have competing pages, you might want to combine some, delete some, or rewrite some of them to make the benefits to the visitor clearer.
About six months outside of seasonal traffic
About six months into your peak season, check to see if you’re currently showing up for your most important dates.
If not, do the same exercise as above and start looking at how you can improve your copy.
I start about eight months in advance, but that’s because I like to run more tests than necessary – six months is enough time for you to get to content and code freezes three or four months before your busy season begins.
Pro tip: Don’t split test organic traffic and pages.
This goes wrong in many ways. Instead, create a plan, test copy, and formulation for conversions via PPC, then roll out the best experience over time to see how it indexes and ranks.
Annual evaluations
It’s always a good idea to conduct an annual assessment.
You probably know what your top-performing copy is, but perhaps your site’s category isn’t being known. This is easy to find in most analysis packages.
Sort by SEO traffic, then view by category folder (Collections if you’re in Shopify) and you’ll see how the categories fare.
From there, you can change the page structure, create internal links, and check for missing sections.
You can also more easily see if copy and h tags are working on categories and find categories that have been skipped.
Another big find in this exercise is that posts that used to do well fell, but others took their place. You can see this with a time comparison and then repeat the fallen pages if necessary.
If you find that traffic is steady because one post has taken over another, now is your chance to double your traffic.
Work to preserve the fallen pages and maintain the current one. Fixing older pages can sometimes be more effective than creating new ones, and it’s easier, which can save you time.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to when to do a content SEO audit, but these are four good times to do one.
I hope it helps.
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Featured image: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock
