The common belief in the world of online marketing is that in order to generate more traffic, it is important to generate more content. Digital marketers typically follow the principle that a larger number of web pages and blogs can translate into more ways for people to locate your website. However, this is not true all the time. Auditing and optimizing your old content is also a good way of boosting your dental site or blog traffic.
What Fuels the ‘More Equals More’ Myth?
Digital marketers create a great deal of content in the hope that it will help you strike gold some day. They believe that just one blog post that goes viral is the golden nugget that will establish a lasting reputation as well as search ranking for the blog. Such magic bullet blog posts are what encourage this notion and keep it going. This way of thinking has been considered best practice right from the start of SEO.
But in reality, this approach is nothing but a wager. It is quite possible that you might write hundreds more blog posts and still not be able to generate anything that attains this kind of wildfire success.
How to Re-use Your Existing Content?
Fact of the matter is, with everyone vying for the same spaces on the internet, you have to stay ahead of the competition. Thus, it will not suffice to write too many short blog posts that do not provide a thorough answer to customers’ queries. It might seem a formidable task to generate in-depth content regularly, but if you already have a compilation of existing blog content, then it will be easier to start off right away.
The following are some things you can remember to help make your content a magnet for new traffic:
1. Spruce Up Your Existing Collection
The unproductive blog posts occupying space on your website can prove detrimental to the site traffic flow. Hence, it is important to first analyze the underperforming blog posts. You can do this by scrutinizing Google analytics to pinpoint posts with the least views over the past one year, particularly the ones which have zero views.
Check every one of these posts and assess them on these lines:
- Is the post wholly unhelpful and outdated or does it have any relevant information?
- Can the post be updated quickly to make it helpful to your current audience?
- Are there any external or internal links in this post that you need to know about?
- Does your site already have a more recent, better post on the same topic?
After going through your past dental blogs, do not hesitate to take down the ones that no longer provide value to the readers, are not relevant anymore, or have become obsolete. These could include posts about outdated services and old announcements. It is possible to delete blog posts without adversely impacting your search rankings.
Just ensure that you are coming up with appropriate redirects and retaining useful content that could be used in another post. A lot of bloggers and companies have realized that eliminating old posts helps portray a lucid picture of all that your website content has to offer.
2. See if Keyword Cannibalization is Present
Next, check for those posts which feature the same keywords repetitively. It is likely that you are among the majority of companies that have nearly two dozen blogs that all utilize the same precise keyword phrase for all core services and products.
This is largely harmful to your results instead of being helpful. Often, search engines do not receive any hints from your website or external sources to assist them in comprehending which posts are of relevance to a particular topic.
So, to pinpoint blogs on the same topics, you can utilize Google’s site search function or conduct a search in your blog tool.
By cataloguing every blog on specific topics, you can organize similar content together. In certain cases, this might be general topics that use various keyword phrases such as all posts that deal with pricing or cost of your service. It can also be blogs that feature precisely the same keyword phrase. In all likelihood, your past content will be a blend of both.
You can organize your blogs with the help of a spreadsheet. Categorize the blogs by topic or keyword and provide links to every post with a match. Also include the sum total of views to the blog and also mention the presence or absence of links – external or internal. After you are done compiling blog posts that are similar, you can utilize the following strategies to enhance the content and extract better results.
3. Merge Posts That Display Stellar Performance
Check the list of blogs you have put together and scrutinize the results to figure out the posts which are most valuable to Google. Usually, these will be posts with a greater number of views and higher external links. Internal links are also of significance. These are simpler to update and can help with new posts in future.
Be prudent in choosing the best blog. At the same time, you should understand that it is likely that there is no correct answer. It is possible that you will end up with more than one such blog. Do not waste time contemplating this too much.
Begin with one single blog post and look at others on the same topic. This will help you incorporate any information that is missing or relevant. It might be necessary to change the structure a bit to make it all come together.
After you are done revising the content, go ahead and change the title and URL too if necessary. Changing your URL to just “yourdomain.com/keyword-phrase”, can be a wise move. This helps send a direct keyword signal to search engines besides helping you update the title in future as your content continues to change. An additional benefit is that it will assist in avoiding duplication of content later.
After your refreshed content goes live, deactivate other contributing blogs that you have and channel them to your refreshed blog post. Ensure that you also refresh the other posts that contained the old links to them.
4. Content Pillars Are a Must
You can compile your knowledge of a particular topic into a single resource that enlightens and attracts your target audience. Content pillars are a great way of doing this. Here, an outline of a specific topic is created on one page that links to lengthier, extensive articles on every subtopic. This way, it is possible to come up with a helpful guide that appeals to real people as well as search engines.
5. Sort Your Internal Linking Signals
A lot of people skip this crucial part of the process. The internal linking structure is what helps search engines figure out how your content comes together. After you are done updating your content, try a different site search of your website. In the Google search bar, type “site:yourwebsite.com” and the keyword phrase. Check where the phrase pops up on your website and ensure that it links to the updated blog post.
Simply put, this is one way of steering searching engines towards your website by indicating that anytime someone conducts a search for the keyword phrase, the specific page on your site is the one to be displayed.
6. Be Sure to Create External Links or Back Links to Your Content
Once your website is set up to guide users to the appropriate place for every keyword term, you can enhance the reputation of the page only by getting validation from other websites that this is a beneficial resource for a particular search phrase.
Find some time to post guest blogs or approach other partners to garner additional links to your site. The greater the number of links to a page, the better it is. Though it is an effort that requires time, it is definitely useful in improving your results.
The number of strategies on getting new back links is unlimited. When you are prepared to take on this step in the process, take a look at the resources that deal with broken link building, guest blogging, and skyscraper technique to improve upon your back links.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is this strategy requires a substantial amount of effort. However, this type of effort on your dental website or blog can potentially produce handsome dividends by increasing your organic blog traffic and reader engagement manifold. Observe your data closely and watch out for indications to determine that your refreshed site and blogs are doing better.
It will take consistent effort to get your blog performance to the level you want. Just keep in mind that content in the digital sphere will evolve continuously. To do better than your competition, focus on making your dental site or blog content more current, more strategic, and more enriched.
About the Author
Naren Arulrajah is President and CEO of Ekwa Marketing, a complete internet marketing company that focuses on SEO, social media, marketing education, and the online reputations of dentists. With a team of 180+ full time marketers, www.ekwa.com helps dentists who know where they want to go, get there by dominating their market and growing their business significantly year after year. If you have questions about marketing your practice online, call 855-598-3320 to speak one-on-one with Naren.
