How to Update Website Content for SEO

The organic search landscape is constantly changing, especially in the past few years with major algorithm updates, evolving Search Quality Rater Guidelines, and the growing influence of AI. There is an even bigger emphasis on maintaining up-to-date content for both traditional search engines, such as Google and Bing, and large language models, like ChatGPT.

People crave human connection. That’s why consumers constantly look for reputable sources that offer clarity, relevance, and accuracy. To establish your website as a valuable resource, your content needs to directly answer questions, address real pain points, and show expertise.

A content refresh involves updating existing website content to improve its accuracy, relevance, and overall performance. Rather than creating entirely new pages, a refresh improves what’s already there by:

• Revising outdated statistics

• Adding new insights

• Improving structure

• Optimizing for current SEO best practices

• Aligning better with user intent

This approach helps maintain the content’s value over time and ensures it continues to meet the needs of both search engines and users.

Search engines favor updated, relevant information, especially with the introduction of AI Overviews. For example, here are the websites linked in the AI Overview result for “b2b marketing”:

Two of the three linked posts mention 2025, which demonstrates that Google is looking for up-to-date information and providing it to users. As a result, it’s important to stay on top of your website content and identify when the right time is to update it.

Benefits of Updating Existing Website Content

Refreshing content isn’t just about keeping things current. It can help your pages perform better in search results, provide more value to users, and even drive more conversions without starting from scratch every time.

• Increased SERP Visibility: Search engines favor updated information. By updating your content, you can improve your chances of appearing in the top positions for relevant keywords.

• New Backlinks: Updating content can attract fresh backlinks and social shares, which can, in turn, bring in more traffic.

• Faster than Writing New Content: Updating existing content typically takes less time than writing content from scratch, which saves you time and energy!

• Build Authority: Regularly updating website content shows that you are active on the website and can be a trustworthy source of information.

• Improved User Experience: Clearer structure, updated visuals, and more helpful content keep users engaged longer and reduce bounce rates.

• Content Consolidation Opportunities: Refreshing gives you a chance to combine overlapping or underperforming content into a single, stronger page.

However, one large piece of updating content is knowing when and how to do it.

There are a few factors to consider when figuring out what content to update and when.

• Relevancy: Is this topic still relevant for your business or industry? Are people searching for this topic?

• Stage of Marketing Funnel: Will this piece bring in potential customers? If a super top-of-funnel blog post isn’t going to bring in people ready to convert when your goal is lead generation, is it worth taking the time to update the post to improve its visibility?

• Traffic: Is this page bringing in traffic? What is the source of the traffic?

• Organic visibility: Is this page appearing in the top positions for relevant keywords? What about in SERP features, like AI Overviews?

• Expertise: Do you or your team have someone with the experience and expertise to write about this subject? Does it relate to your business’s products/services?

Content Freshness: When was the last time this page was updated? If it hasn’t been touched in a year or more, it’s worth reviewing, even if it’s still performing okay.

Once you’ve identified a page that needs a refresh, here are a few key things to keep in mind during the update process.

Updating Information

If there’s outdated information, I highly recommend replacing it. For example, if you click on a page about taxes, you don’t want information from 2005; you want up-to-date information so you know it is following today’s regulations.

Search engines also prioritize content that has up-to-date information, so regularly updating content helps maintain visibility and relevance.

Answering People’s Questions

People search for something specific, whether it is an answer to a question or a solution. Your content should speak directly to that need.. Let’s say your business sells generator interlock kits, and someone is searching “what generator interlock kit do I need?”. If your blog post is optimized for SEO and provides relevant information on finding the right kit, the user landing on your website could ultimately lead to revenue.

💡 Bonus Tip: Add FAQ structured data to help your website’s visibility in SERP Features!

Follow SEO Best Practices

Ultimately, if your page isn’t set up for technical and on-page SEO success, it may not even appear for users to find in search results. Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

• Include relevant keywords naturally throughout the content

• Follow a hierarchical header tag structure

• Optimize your metatitle and meta descriptions

• Add schema markup where it makes sense

💡 Not sure if you are following the right practices? Workshop Digital can help (or offer a second opinion).

Showcase E-E-A-T Signals

Google’s algorithm favors sites that show high levels of experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (also known as E-E-A-T). These signals help users find the best, most credible information. Pages that show strong E-E-A-T are more likely to rank well. Here’s what to look at:

• Your site’s online reputation

• Local presence

• Author credibility and subject-matter experience

• How clearly your content demonstrates expertise

Overall, it’s imperative to focus on ways you can show all of the factors of E-E-A-T through website content and on and off your site.

For more information about E-E-A-T, check out our comprehensive blog post.

If you have a lot of content on your website, it can be hard to know which ones to tackle first (or which ones to tackle at all).

Enter the Content Refresh Priority Scorecard.

What is the Content Refresh Priority Scorecard?

The Content Refresh Priority Scorecard is a custom analysis we offer to help identify which pages on your website should be prioritized for updates and optimizations. Using a combination of organic traffic trends, keyword rankings, impressions, clicks, and year-over-year performance data, we assign a score to each URL to show where your efforts will have the most impact.

For example, our COVID Ad Policy blog post appears at the bottom of the triage sheet in the sample video. It hasn’t received traffic this year or last, since interest in that topic has significantly declined, making it a low priority for updates.

What Do We Need to Run the Analysis?

To run the Content Refresh Priority Scorecard for your website, we’ll need access to:

• GA4 access

• Google Search Console access

Once we have access, we’ll take care of the heavy lifting and walk you through the results, highlighting which pages are strong candidates for a refresh and why.

Updating content is one of the most effective ways to drive long-term SEO success and attract the right visitors to your site. With our Content Refresh Priority Scorecard, we’ll help you identify exactly which pages to focus on first, so you can make smarter, faster content decisions that support your goals.

Not sure if your SEO is on the right track? Contact us today for a free second opinion—or to get started with your custom priority scorecard analysis.