Why Should You Spring Clean Your Content?
Over the years, we've all created excellent content that met the current strategies and needs of the Internet-world. There have been plenty of Google updates, and many people have worked to make sure their content meets each algorithm for the best results. However, all of this content can become stale and start cluttering up your website. You should take the chance to re-organize your content and make sure everything is in tip-top shape for the rest of the year.
How Can You Do It?
"I don't want to get rid of all of my web pages, though!" Don't worry, you don't have to get rid and donate your pages like you would your household items or clothing. But you can do some awesome things to make sure your content is new and looking better than ever. I am going to take a look at the top ways you can achieve this and make your content awesome for the rest of 2015.
Spring Is Here: Our Guide to Spring-Cleaning Your Web Content
Here are the top ways you can spring clean your content, starting as soon as possible.
- Get a Content Audit to Refresh and Clean Your Existing Content. One of the best ways to start the spring clean is to get an awesome content audit. What does a content audit do for your site and how can it help you organize things? A content audit will check your URLs and page titles to make sure nothing is broken and to help you implement adequate keywords to help with ranks. It can also help you look at your product descriptions, blogs, and other forms of content to see if it matches up with the latest Google algorithms, as well as checking for grammar and spelling. In short, a content audit will take a look at your entire website and help you to start working on some excellent ways to fix your website and make it perfect.
- Take a Look at Keywords - Do New, Fresh Keyword Research. Even with the latest content updates to Google algorithms, keywords are still vital to websites and helping your rank. However, many people don't realize that the keywords that worked two months ago might not work now. The best way to make sure your content is still leveraging the advantage you want is to do fresh keyword research and implement new keywords for your website. This can also help you research new keywords as you think of them, and implement new ones into your strategy. You can do keyword research on your own or find professionals who are trained in research to help you find the best ones for your site.
- Generate New Blog Topic Ideas for the Month. You can come up with blog topics for the whole year, but it is best to make sure those are all evergreen topics that will still be relevant in a few years. However, you should come up with new blog topics each month to help keep your content consistently fresh. This will help you write about great, trendy things going on in your industry as well as writing on news topics to give your clients and readers more, useful information.Coming up with blog topics can be difficult, but it is possible. HubSpot provides a blog topic generator that helps you come up with great headlines and can help you brainstorm new ideas. If you're still having a hard time coming up with new topic ideas, you can follow some of the suggestions from Entrepreneur such as writing on the questions your clients ask or something you'd like to know more about yourself.
- Create a Content Editorial Calendar. In order to keep your content organized and looking amazing, you can also create a content editorial calendar for the year and current month. You don't necessarily need anything fancy, you can use Google Calendar, but you can also create your own template. Either way you choose, it will help you organize your ideas. If you constantly review it and compare with analytics, it can also help you see which posts are currently working and if you need to tweak any of your future posts to match.
- Get Fresh Content Such as Product Descriptions and Web Pages. Sit back and take a second to think - how long have you had your current product descriptions and static content? Sure, you may have had regular blogs posted but have you thought about your other content? Having the same content for a long time can make your website look and feel stale. While new customers might not notice this, your existing clients will. A great way to spring clean your content is to get fresh content for your various landing pages and product descriptions. This will look great and, you can even share new information you may have about your product or service.
- Re-evaluate Your Social Media Strategy. Just like with fresh content on your website, you need to have fresh content for your social media pages. While you might be consistently publishing new content, you need to make sure the strategy is still working. Take the time to look at your strategy and see what is working and what isn't to make any necessary changes. A great way to do this is to review your social media analytics. However, don't make this a once a year thing, review your analytics every month or every other week. Just choose a time and schedule that works for you to help you see how well your social strategy is working and make any necessary changes.
- Hire Copyeditors to Look Over Your Work. If you notice that your content has several errors or know that you haven't always bee a stronger writer, then a good idea is to have your content copyedited by a trained professional. Copyeditors can be the second pair of eyes that looks at content to ensure it is grammatically correct and that there aren't any spelling errors. If they are trained in SEO, they can also check to ensure that you utilize your keywords to their full potential. Copyeditors can also look for other elements such as high-quality content and the research to back it up. This will help you make sure you have the best content, no matter what, helping your page rank higher on the SERP and gaining more clicks and eventually more revenue.
- Consider Hiring Industry Copywriters to Improve Your Reach. Along with a copyeditor, you can also hire industry copywriters to improve your content and reach. Copywriters are great because they understand the importance of high-quality work and have been trained in creating excellent content. While you may have plenty of experience in your industry, your writing may not be on par with what your site truly needs. In addition to a generic copywriter, an industry copywriter can implement the knowledge of your industry into your writing. There are several copywriters out there who can write excellent content for your specific industry making sure it is not only high quality but also knowledgeable to help set you apart from your competitors, and helping you rank.
- Review Your Strategies and Make Any and All Tweaks. The one thing with content, whether social content or on your website is that rules can and do, change. This means that you need to be in the know with the changes that are happening and start tweaking your content to meet them. Yes, this means you will need to be consistently learning new things, but this will help you leverage your content and get exactly what you need out of it. If you don't learn the new tips and tricks, you could be stuck back in the Internet Stone Age, losing out on both new and existing customers.
Don't Forget to Whistle While You Work
Spring cleaning can be a fun time to see what your content looks like and how you can improve every aspect of your business. If you are looking for content auditing services or for industry copywriters to help you spring clean your content, look no further. Express Writers has some of the most talented team members that will work to make sure your website, blog, and social channels have the best quality, helping you clean out the cobwebs and making excellent content. Don't hesitate to contact us to see just how we can help you.
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