A quick guide to optimize underperforming content

Save your SEO performance from stale or lackluster content elements. Hunt down the underperformers and re-optimize them effectively using this guide.

Do you feel your content needs to be performing, or is it too old to fit into the latest SEO patterns? It’s time for an update and to revive your content for better results.

When your content is not giving you a quality return on investment, it is essential to tweak, edit, rewrite or update the old content. It’s not necessary that being old is always good, and you have to advance with the latest information to keep it best.

How the process of content modification starts?

There are a few factors that help you in knowing when you need to process the content update. By measuring these factors, you will be able to stand out and make a difference in the situation.

• Check the content ranking in search.
• Knowing the content interaction like reading time and more.
• Evaluating the engagement, such as comments or shares.
• Checking the earning conversion if there are any.

Why optimize underperforming content?

Investing your time in optimizing existing content is more cost-effective and effortless. You have to improve the content, which will do well with content marketing. There is no need to work on the concepts and ideas from scratch. It requires little research and a modification of the pictures to make the piece more practical and workable.

However, it attains the best benefits out of the content. You need it to identify the underperforming content and work on it to make it better.

Identifying the underperforming content

On your website, it’s important to look around and pick up the underperforming content options. It’s quite easy to work out by running are matrices. You can check out for

• The keywords used in the content and their ranking
• Average position of the content in the search result
• Engagement matches of page views, sessions, time on the page, bounce rate, social shares and comments are another analysis method.

If these matrices show you a mid-range result, you can give content a little push and work on it to improve things. However, a lower score indicates you need to work on the whole content body and strategy and redo some major actions after evaluation to produce better results.

Things to fix in underperforming content

Once you have marked the underperforming content, it’s time to take action and make serious changes. Here are things that help you make quick fixes and improvements.

Targeted keywords

The first thing you need to check for your underperforming content is the keywords. Are you using targeted keywords that are winnable or not?

If your targeted keyword land in stiff competition online and many high-authority websites are ranking using this keyword, you are in trouble. Your developing or weak authority will never rank on it.

Instead, you can try using long tail, fewer competition keywords that bring you more chances to be ranked. You will get almost 70% of the search volume on these long-tail keywords, which is ideal for new domains.

Keywords placement at strategic places

You have used keywords in the underperforming keywords; however, are these placed right? Using keywords at the right and prominent on-page locations is equally important. You can never ignore the placement of the keywords.

You must include the main keyword in the:

• First heading or title of the content.
• In the first paragraph
• In any one H2 or H3 of the content
• Naturally, sprinkle all along the text body
• In the image alt text

However, you should use the keywords variations or synonyms in the H3 and all over the content. Never stuff the content too much; use it frequently in the content body but make variations.

Balanced content distribution

Long and generic written content is a big no for optimization. If you can see larger paragraphs with no headings or subheadings, you should never doubt why it’s not ranking.

In your content, there must be headings, subheadings, image alt text, bullet points and even some notes. You need to work on these small elements that add more worth to the content. Even adding snippets and FAQs is another way to make it more interactive.

Work out the Meta

Using a good meta title and meta description with the right placement of keywords is another important thing. It helps you to stand out and make a difference in the condition. You need to make it fit within the standard as a necessary optimization protocol.

Be focused on the length of the meta title and description. It should be within limits and match the standards.

Fact-checking for data

If you are using any facts or stats in the content, there has to be up to date. Always check out the data and stats with the latest studies to mark them as up-to-date. If you did the research in the past yourself about the data, it’s good to redo the latest research, and with the comparison of stats, you can cite it more effectively.

Work on readability and quality for the reader

The content should be easy to read and grip the reader’s attention. Provide what your audience wants to know. Give them the information they seek, and you can make it the best. Never go for the lame information but add value to it. Write content for the general audience so they can benefit from it and work things better.

Never lose your investment in your underperforming content!

You can increase your investment return by working out your underperforming content. It will save you from the loss and lets you grab the audience crawlers more effectively. All you need is to make things pretty clear and fit them to standards. Once done, you are good to proceed with outcomes.