3 Aspens Media Prioritized Updating Existing Content – and Saw Strong Results

At 3 Aspens Media, we frequently recommend incorporating content updates into our clients’ editorial calendars. Updating content that’s already performing well keeps it relevant not only to your audience, but also to Google and other search engines.

But when it came to doing it ourselves, we struggled with consistency. The resources we use to maintain our content strategy are the same as those used for our clients’ – and clients take priority.

However, we’re on a mission to practice what we preach. How we present ourselves should represent what we can do for our clients. So, we took a deep breath and renewed our commitment to our content.

Mid-2022, we prioritized updating one high-performing blog every other month.

“Updating content is an often-overlooked strategy. Don’t let your older content go stale. Updating for SEO and relevance can be a powerful way to keep your resource library up to date and useful for your prospects and customers.” – Lindsay Young, President, 3 Aspens Media

Challenge: An Abundant, Resourceful Archive Going Stale

The longer content goes untouched, the easier it is for it to lose steam in Google search and fall off audiences’ radar – no matter how well it performed at the start. Plus, there’s a high chance the references and statistics in the copy will go out of date, making your content seem irrelevant. Often, the content itself and its URL can be salvaged with simple updates and improvements, putting it back on the radar.

Fulfilling our initiative to update our content has been a team effort. 3 Aspens Media assigned managing responsibilities to a dedicated team member, who works with our SEO specialist, editors, writers and design services division to update and optimize existing content – and keep the wheels in motion.

“It was critical to assign one person accountable for prioritizing this project, keeping the rest of us on track,” said Teri Vannoy, COO of 3 Aspens Media. “Without assigning this responsibility to one person, the project could’ve easily fallen off the radar or languished in the land of ‘someone else will tackle that.’”

Solution: Focused Efforts – One Step at a Time

We approached this project with a few parameters that have been pivotal to its success.

For one, we’re taking our time. We understood we couldn’t commit to five updates a month – or anything close to that. We chose to update every other month, giving us room to produce new content and continue to prioritize our clients. We’re big believers in slow and steady winning the race.

Second, we’re being selective about our updates. We’re hitting the blogs that are getting the most attention from Google, yet clearly need TLC to be relevant and helpful to our audience.

And third, we’re making meaningful changes, having new conversations with new sources, incorporating new data and best practices, and sharing new experiences with our clients.

What does the content-update process look like?

• Identify top-performing content in Google.
• Prioritize content that aligns with our goals today.
• Conduct new SEO research on each topic.
• Identify opportunities to conduct interviews with subject matter experts.
• Crowdsource tips and advice from the team and other experts.
• Update content with the latest trends, statistics, best practices and insights.
• Ensure SEO best practices are followed, such as images with alt text, meta descriptions, improved titles if necessary and adding videos.

Since this initiative kicked off, we have successfully updated one article every other month, and we’ve already seen impressive results. We’re also more confident in the value these blogs provide, the impression they make and their alignment with our brand voice.

Outcomes: Updates Bring Valuable Content Back into the Spotlight

Blog Post – Google My Business 101: How to Optimize Your Google Business Profile

This blog has historically been a top performer, but that’s not the only reason it made our update list. The blog covers a Google tool that changed, so it was important to update the content to be relevant.

In the 31 days after re-launching this post, these were the results versus the previous period:

• 472% increase in overall pageviews
• 490% increase in organic pageviews
• 243% increase in impressions on Google
• Over 10x increase in clicks on Google

For the three-month post-update period versus the previous period:

• 823% increase in overall pageviews
• 786% increase in organic pageviews
• 876% increase in impressions on Google
• Over 11x increase in clicks on Google

10 Goal Completions for User Engagement versus 2 for the previous period.

See the blog in the wild >>

Blog Post – How to Nail Subject Matter Expert Interviews

We frequently interview subject matter experts (SMEs) as part of our writing process at 3 Aspens Media. So, we know a thing or two about conducting these interviews. It’s no surprise our blog on this topic hovered on our top 10 list, as it was already a valuable read. But it needed a refresh, with more detail, images and resources to engage with. As part of this refresh, we included an interactive slider and created a downloadable resource: Top 15 Questions to Ask Subject Matter Experts.

In the 31 days after re-launching this post, these were the results versus the previous period:

• 678% increase in overall pageviews
• 360% increase in organic pageviews
• 87% increase in impressions on Google
• 100% increase in clicks on Google

For the three-month post-update period versus the previous period:

• 159% increase in overall pageviews
• 118% increase in organic pageviews
• 137% increase in impressions on Google
• 77% increase in clicks on Google

See the blog in the wild >>

8 Email Subject Line Ideas to Boost Open Rates

Our blog with advice for email subject lines was a consistent top-performer. But it had been a few years since we touched it, and there were new opportunities and examples to share. We took the blog from a list of five ideas to a list of eight. The only snag was that the original URL included “5.” In this case, we updated the URL to be more evergreen – no number – and redirected the old blog to this new URL. Now, if we update the blog in the future, it’ll be more seamless to change the number of ideas we list.

31 days after re-launching this post versus the previous period:

• 324% increase in overall pageviews
• 173% increase in organic pageviews
• 263% increase in impressions on Google
• 86% increase in clicks on Google

For the three-month post-update period versus the previous period:

• 226% increase in overall pageviews
• 146% increase in organic pageviews
• 443% increase in impressions on Google
• 125% increase in clicks on Google

7 Goal Completions for User Engagement versus 1 for the previous period.

See the blog in the wild >>

 

3 Aspens Media is a B2B content strategy and marketing content production firm. We work with distributors and the companies that serve them. We translate their benefits to key
decision-makers with case studies, guides, social media, email, webinars and more. Get in touch with us at info@3aspensmedia.com to learn more.