Since the normal course of marketing operations is creating new content, a review of existing content is often overlooked. However, there are significant benefits to performing a regular review.
Evergreen Content
Older content may be performing well but could be embarrassingly out of date, damaging your brand and reputation as an industry leader. Some materials have been created by you and your team to be “evergreen”, however, even evergreen content needs attention from time to time. Evergreen content may not necessarily need a time and date review but may need a relevance check. Consider editing the old content for changes in common terminology or market changes, but also consider creating a new asset based on the old if it needs significant updating. Non-evergreen content can also be updated to meet current standards.
Keep Old Content
Removing old content could be detrimental to future performance. Google and other search engines have likely already indexed your content. Removing the content could impact your search ranking. Instead, opt for updating the content rather than deleting it.
Look at the videos you have posted to YouTube, Vimeo, or any other video hosting platform. Make sure the links to additional information in the video notes or related blog post or website page are current and active. This is especially important when linking to third party sites or resources.
Search Engine Optimization
On a more technical aspect of your content review, be sure to perform a search engine optimization (SEO) audit. SEO involves keywords and other strategies like headline verbiage that influence how your content is ranked by search engines. Most of your publishing tools related to website and blog writing will have SEO optimization tools as part of their toolbox available to your team. If new catchphrases or terminology have become prevalent, the SEO components need to be modified to reflect these changes.
Work with your technical team on aspects related to page titles, headlines, keywords, URLs, image optimization, word count, and meta descriptions, all of which are critical to search indexing.
Persona Review
Over time, your target customer types, or personas, may have shifted. Perhaps your sales team has started to focus on a new market. If so, is your content being written and created from this new perspective? Consider the fact that now you need to create unique content for old and new personas to relate to.
Call to Action
Consider whether your content leads to definitive calls to action. Try to avoid “dead ends” where your content does not offer a path to a purchase, meeting, or next step in the education process. It is critical to guide your customer along the buyer’s journey. If you do not show them the direct path, they will potentially leave your website or blog and go find the information they think should come next in their investigation for a solution, product, or service.
Ready, Set, Review
Step 2 is to review your existing content. The reality is that over time, much of it will be less relevant and could age through no fault of your own. A good spring cleaning of your content will keep your ideas and solutions fresh and relevant to a modern buyer.
Need Help with Content?
Vector Firm offers content marketing services for system integration businesses. From planning to execution, our team can help.
