How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months

    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    Blog traffic is not just about new articles. If a blog has been actively living for more than 2-3 years, it accumulates content, and these are reserves that can be raised and made to work. We tell how we squeezed out of old articles + 104% to search traffic and how much it cost - without attracting paid traffic.


    Spoiler: scoring archived articles, powerful pumping of semantics, updating content, technical optimization. No miracles, only systematic work.



    Old content - what's the problem


    Last summer, the PromoPult blog (then SeoPult) turned 8 years old. At that time, there were about 1000 articles in it.


    Sources of traffic: 62% - organic, 26% - direct referrals, the rest - referral traffic, social networks, newsletters and other channels.


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    In August, we began to change the blog: redesign and improvement of usability, a new rubricator, new formats of articles.


    And they wondered what to do with previously published articles. There are a lot of them, they attract traffic, but there are problems.


    Some have lost their relevance completely (articles about Yandex.Catalog and DMOZ nnada?). Others are partially (for example, service reviews, half of which are no longer working). Still others seemed like nothing, but I wanted to do better.


    The saddest thing was the articles that disappointed visitors. They ranged well, the headline met the needs of the visitor, but the information in the article was outdated.


    About 10 thousand users from Yandex / Google came in a month, and a good half of them came to irrelevant articles dated 2013-2015. It is clear that no one was particularly late on the blog, and behavioral spoiled - the failure rate was disproportionately high (80-90%).


    You could do different things - for example, write new articles on popular topics, and redirect old ones to them, or try to squeeze old articles out of a search with new ones. Or do nothing and just write new articles on traffic topics.


    We decided to use our SEO resource sparingly. So as not to lose what was acquired, but not to drown in updating the content.


    Scoring old articles


    We scored articles - uploaded the statistics of search traffic for the last year from Yandex.Metrica and, according to the Pareto principle, allocated 20% (200 pieces) of publications with the highest traffic.


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    We focused on updating traffic articles. Why:


    • the amount of work is not prohibitive and generally final;
    • We work with articles that already lead targeted visitors and have a trust;
    • with a high probability, the share of search users who get relevant content on the blog will increase, and behavioral indicators will improve.

    Over the 6 months of operation (from October 2018 to March 2019), we achieved traffic growth from the search for updated articles at the level of 104% compared to the previous period. How we succeeded, what happened in the end and how much money we spent - more on that later.


    How to improve articles


    Compilation of the semantic core


    What did:


    • unloaded semantics from Yandex.Webmaster, according to which there were impressions of the blog pages for the last 3 months;
    • expanded semantics with the help of the native parser of association phrases , and then deepened with the help of the search tool parser ;
    • clustered semantics for Yandex PS - they also used the “native” clustering (accuracy in the range from 3 to 7, region - Russia).

    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    Received about 30 thousand grouped requests. For each request, the clusterer issued top URLs - they will come in handy more than once.


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    Then the pages from the TOP-200 were assigned clusters. They did it this way: they looked for a page from the TOP-200 in the Top column of the URL file with the results of clustering. The cluster in which the URL was found was assigned to the desired page.


    Often, the pages from the TOP-200 were not among the Top URLs. In this case, clusters were assigned based on two criteria:


    1. the total cluster frequency is higher than 500-1000,
    2. high relevance of keys to the content of the article.

    Cluster keys were used to optimize meta tags and page content. They were entered naturally and only as necessary - without crooked formulations, incorrect cases and spam.


    Competitors semantics


    Additionally analyzed not only the content, but also the semantics of competitors:


    • alternately opened competitors' URLs from the Top URL column and analyzed their texts in the semantic analysis service from Advego (4-7 URLs are enough);
    • they wrote out information markers - plus-words that allowed the copywriter to better understand what issues to disclose.

    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    Further, these plus words were entered in the TK along with key phrases from the cluster and comments (what, for whom and how to write). Here is an example of real TK:


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    Content optimization and updating


    What have been done in terms of optimization:


    • Title headers were registered manually taking into account the occurrence of the most important keys from the clusters (previously they were automatically generated in the CMS).
    • Description meta tags were registered - they were not filled at all.
    • The alt attributes were specified for the images - they were not there either.
    • Found and fixed broken links.
    • Added (where it was not) or changed h2-h3 subtitles, lists, quotes and other formatting elements - that is, they made the text readable and visually attractive.

    As for the depth of content refinement, it depended on a specific article. According to the volume of work carried out, three groups of articles can be divided into:


    1. Minimal edits. For example, the article on checking the site for PS filters was practically not changed, since it was already in high positions on major requests and sufficiently covered the topic.
    2. Processing of the article by 30-60%. An example is an article on ways to speed up site indexing. Its volume did not exceed 4000 characters - many points were missed. The article was expanded more than 2 times, supplemented with specific recommendations, updated screenshots, added a thematic video.
    3. New content. They did not suffer with hopelessly outdated articles - they made up TK and ordered from scratch. So they did, for example, with a selection of 35 cool landing pages . The old selection was made in 2012, and most of the landing pages were either not available, or not so interesting anymore.

    In percentage terms, it turned out like this: articles with minimal revisions - 44%, with serious improvements - 37%, new articles - 19%.


    Relink


    Internal links are needed for both SEO and visitor engagement. But before the blog articles weren’t practically linked.


    The blog had a lot of content, so finding articles for linking was easy. We didn’t use the services - they did everything manually only from the standpoint of benefit to visitors.


    Links were placed directly in the text:


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    And in the blocks:


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    Update publication date


    It would be strange to update the article and keep the old publication date. Therefore, for all updated articles in WordPress set new dates - a month earlier than the current date. So the updated articles did not interrupt only published materials in the feed, but they signaled to search engines that they should be reindexed.


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months

    Two updated articles in the feed



    Redirects


    We tried to keep the old URLs. But this did not always work out. For example, there was an article called “Six Facebook Tricks,” dated 2012. They thought and wondered how to rewrite it, because all the "tricks" are outdated.


    We analyzed using the Google Search Console queries for which there were impressions and clicks. It turned out that mostly users find an article for queries related to the removal of the last name from the Facebook profile. We adapted the article to the needs of the audience - they called it “How to delete a last name from Facebook” and described a working method for deleting (by the way, this is a fun way, try it ).


    It is clear that leaving a URL of the form * / shest-xitrostej-facebook.html is incorrect, because the topic is now different. Therefore, we placed the article on the new URL * / kak-udalit-familiju-iz-facebook.html and delivered a 301 redirect.


    In general, it is better to avoid unnecessary redirects. A slight discrepancy between the title of the article and its title in the URL is not scary. The main thing is that the user by URL understands what the article is about.


    Native inserts


    Native ad units on a topic were inserted into each updated article. This is the most accurate way to call the reader into the system - it is not as annoying as banners, and allows you to honestly advertise the product without mocking the text of a useful article.


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    Not single articles - how to update the blog as a whole


    The increase in search traffic is associated not only with the optimization of articles. The work on the blog as a whole was carried out. So we improved behavioral indicators - and this indirectly affected attendance.


    Usability and layout


    The design of the blog has completely changed. They made modern record cards on the main page, added involving images and announcements.


    Before the redesign, the main page of the blog looked like this:


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    After the redesign (and later rebranding):


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    The layout was also redone: they changed the font, increased its size and line spacing. The width of the text column was about 75 characters - optimal for reading. Added CSS styles in corporate colors for subtitles, lists, quotes, as well as a background image under the header. Made a normal mobile version of the site.


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    After improving the usability of the blog, the bounce rate fell to an adequate level.


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    New section - a new front line


    Such sections were on the blog before the start of work:


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    But they stopped responding to the concept of service development, as the emphasis shifted from SEO technologies to the integrated automation of Internet marketing.


    We made thematic sections - for specific areas of Internet marketing (contextual advertising, content, link building and PR, etc.) and our products, added system news and just news.


    Next, it was necessary to post old articles in new sections and set up redirects. This is a huge job, and we did not waste time processing the entire thousand articles. The articles from the TOP-200, which were selected earlier, were transferred to the new headings. The rest remained in the old sections, which are not visible from the main page.


    After transferring articles and setting up redirects, traffic remained:


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months

    This is the statistics of one article: before the change of the rubricator, after it and after the rebranding (change of domain)



    We also optimized the heading pages: prescribed Title and Description and added small text descriptions.


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    Tagging


    Blog tags make it easy to navigate intersecting articles from different categories and help show recommended articles.


    And we had them - 974 tags for 1064 posts. That is, almost every article was assigned unique tags, which made them not usable.


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    We decided that cleaning tags from old articles was unproductive - a lot of work and implicit profit. Therefore, they simply ceased to produce them in new articles - we really use about 30 tags.


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    Result: double organic growth


    After starting work on old articles, there has been a steady increase in traffic from searching for them:


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    The total traffic from the search for October-March 2018/2019 exceeded the traffic for April-September 2018 by 104%. Due to updating the content for six months we received an additional 35,177 visits.


    Moreover, the deeper the articles were processed, the higher was the increase in attendance. This fully corresponds to the logic of the process and indicates the correctness of the action.


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    Worked in plus and behavioral indicators. So, the time on the site is growing for all groups of articles. If before users did not spend more than 30-50 seconds on the site, now the average time tends to one and a half minutes.


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    What about the money?


    The calculations presented here are rather arbitrary - there are still fixed costs for maintaining and promoting the blog. But there are "bare" numbers that can be divided, multiplied and get the costs exactly on the reincarnation of old articles.


    A total of 65,600 rubles were spent on updating the articles (paying for the work of the optimizer, copywriter, and layout designer). Of them:


    • 15540 rub. - for articles with minimal revisions;
    • 21 660 rub. - for serious revision;
    • RUB 28,400 - to new articles.

    An additional unit of traffic from the search (for October-March 2018/2019) cost less than 2 rubles (65,600 rubles / 35,177 visits).


    Judging by the dynamics, traffic will only grow, so its cost (subject to maintaining the relevance of the articles) will tend to zero.


    It is worth noting that, unlike new publications, old articles were practically not supported by paid traffic. Organics, only organics.


    If you look at the context of updating methods, then the cost of attracted traffic is this:


    • minimum edits - 2.7 rubles (15540 rubles / 5760 visits);
    • serious revision - 3.7 rubles (21660 rubles / 5857 visits);
    • writing from scratch - 1.2 rubles (28400 rubles / 23560 visits).

    The cheapest traffic went to articles written from scratch. But this does not mean that other methods are less effective. Writing articles requires serious organizational resources, and there is no guarantee that new articles will “shoot” more than revised ones. Therefore, it is still better to lay eggs in different baskets.


    Interesting observations of traffic behavior


    When you start updating content, you want traffic to grow like this:


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    In principle, something similar happened with us. But for some articles, search engines ambiguously reacted to updates.


    Hopping traffic spikes after article updates


    Search engines responded positively to 84% of the articles. Almost immediately after the upgrade, there was an increase in traffic from organics. Even articles with minimal revisions showed spasmodic traffic growth.


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    We also noticed that if the article did not begin to grow during the first month after the update, then we should not expect further growth.


    Interestingly, bursts are observed after repeated updating of the same article. For example, we had an article entitled “Six Ways to Drive Free Traffic to a Website”. It was written for a long time, and there were recommendations like “drive the site through directories”. It is clear that this is no longer working. They made the article “Attract free traffic in 2018: what methods still work” - described 10 working and 3 non-working methods. At the beginning of 2019, it was updated again - here is the latest edition . URL did not change - left /shest-sposobov-besplatno-privlech-trafik-na-sajt.html. The article shot well, and twice - after each update. After the second update, growth went exponentially:


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    Thus, if you have articles with good traffic potential and are tied to the year, keep them strictly accounted for and update as soon as necessary, but at least once a year.


    Traffic attenuation over time


    After rapid growth, traffic is often reduced. How strong is another question. For example, in the case of the article about parsing search hints, the drawdown was noticeable.


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    And in the case of the article on accelerating site indexing, the drawdown is more like stabilization.


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    That is, if you have increased traffic after updating the content, and then fell, do not rush to look for reasons - this is a normal process. The main thing is that after the fall, attendance should be higher than before the update.


    But this does not always happen. For example, what to do if such a picture is observed:


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    When gathering positions, we advise you not to do anything in the first 3 months. Just wait. It happens that the position is returned. Sometimes triumphantly:


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    If after 3-4 months the article itself does not come out of the drawdown, update it.


    Life hack: when updating such an article, try using the skyscraper method - analyze competitors from the top and make a new article better in all respects (text length, quality of content, optimization).


    Lack of reaction


    Several articles did not respond at all to optimization and updating. For example, this was the case with vital requests .


    As we later found out, these articles at the time of the start of work were in the TOP for basic queries. The refinement did not give an impetus to the growth of positions in the organic sector, since there is nowhere to grow, in fact, within the framework of the subject.


    How to weed out old articles so that they grow sharply in the organic: + 104% of traffic for six months


    The lack of reaction does not mean that such articles do not need to be updated. If this is not done, then over time more recent articles of competitors will take their place, and it will be more difficult to regain positions. Here the determining factor will be the assessment of labor costs for the control of such articles. There are resources - pull the maximum out of the article.


    Updated articles - what's next?


    All in a circle. Updating is an ongoing process. Here you can’t make and rest on your laurels. Content is changing every day. Either Adwords was renamed to Ads, then Direct rolled out a new interface, then Google+ was closed ... And every time you need to fix articles, change screenshots, or even rewrite everything all over again. Yes, it is dreary and not as interesting as we would like, but the result is worth it.


    This work can be approached in two ways:


    1. If you have a solid blog and a large editorial team, you can highlight a special person who will spend part of his time on traffic analysis and updating articles.
    2. If you, like most companies, have limited resources for your blog, then you just have to set yourself plans to analyze TOP traffic articles every six months / year and see what needs to be corrected, updated and rewritten.

    And may the power of SEO be with you.


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