Have you noticed a once-successful blog post slipping in the rankings and attracting fewer visitors? Content decay – the deterioration or devaluation of content – might be the cause. We’ll show you how to identify outdated content and what steps you can take to revive your rankings and traffic.
What is Content Decay and How Does Outdated Content Impact SEO?
Content decay refers to the decreasing value of blog posts or other content over time.
You can see the effects of this in Google Search Console: an article that once ranked well and attracted a lot of visitors starts to drop in the rankings, leading to a steady decline in traffic.
First off, not all content is affected by this decay. It’s not necessary for every piece of content on your website to always be completely up-to-date.
So, what does “outdated” actually mean? There’s no clear definition. Content doesn’t start losing value after a specific period, like six months or a year. Also, just because a post is old doesn’t mean it’s bad or that people aren’t interested in it anymore.
That said, some content does lose relevance or become obsolete over time. In these cases, you have three options:
- Delete
- Update
- Rewrite
Content Decay in News and Blog Posts with Limited Relevance
This type of content is especially short-lived and quickly loses its relevance. Simply updating details such as screenshots, lists, or headlines usually won’t usually solve the problem, because the entire topic has become outdated. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean the page should be deleted.
Often, it makes sense to keep old content with its original publication date, essentially as a historical record. As long as it’s clear that the content is old, it may still be useful to users researching a particular topic.
The situation is different for information that has become incorrect: if facts and circumstances have changed, it’s important to ensure that users are not misled or presented with outdated information as truth. Such content typically has no reason to exist and can be removed.
If you prefer not to delete the content, you should at least make it clear that some of the information in the post is outdated, for example by placing a banner over the blog post.
Content Decay in Aging Evergreen Content
Evergreen content refers to material that remains relevant over a long period and usually garners significant traffic from organic search results. But what happens when this evergreen content starts to lose its relevance?
Such content is worth regularly updating. This can range from minor updates of specific information, facts, and data to a complete rewrite of the text.
These revisions should be taken seriously and not just involve changing the year in the title and headline. Unfortunately, shortcuts are often taken here: an article about the “Biggest Gravel Bike Mistakes of 2023” suddenly becomes a piece on the “Biggest Gravel Bike Mistakes of 2024.” This may work as clickbait, but users will quickly realize it’s the same content as the previous year.
Tip: Updated articles can continue to live on the same URL, which works best if the URL doesn’t include the original publication date. Including years or dates in the URL is almost always a bad idea.
If you completely rewrite the text, you can publish it on a new URL and redirect the old URL to it. However, keeping both texts live simultaneously is not advisable.
What to Delete and What to Keep?
Here’s an example from our agency’s daily work: Recently, a client contacted us wanting to remove a newspaper article about a potential bankruptcy from the search results. The article was eight years old and clearly irrelevant to the current state of the company. While you can’t delete something from a newspaper, if you have published such content yourself, you should consider whether it still has a place. In this particular case, the old article appeared in search results simply because there were no other articles about the company. Once we published a new news article in a reputable medium, the old one disappeared. Even Google understood it was obsolete.
On the other hand, as the CEO of an SEO agency, I want the talks I’ve given at various SEO conferences over the past 10 years to stay online. For future conference invitations, a continuous series of talks is relevant and interesting. Such pages can be kept alive through updates or cross-linking.
Therefore, each piece of content should be evaluated individually. Ask yourself the following questions before deciding to delete or keep a post:
- Is the content still relevant?
- Does the blog post offer value to users?
- Should certain information be archived instead?
- Does the content still align with the current brand strategy?
- Are there new research findings or developments in the topic area?
- Is the post frequently linked to (both internally and from other websites)?
Conclusion: Timeliness as a Key Component of User Experience
The primary goal should always be to provide users with the best possible information and genuine value. Especially since Google’s “Helpful Content” update, the focus is even more on content quality. Timeliness is a crucial factor in content quality. By regularly reviewing and updating your content, you can prevent content decay and ensure your website remains attractive to both users and search engines.