Creating New Content vs. Optimizing Old Webpages: Which is Better for SEO?

In the world of search engine optimization (SEO), content is king. However, surprisingly, too much content can sometimes backfire. Creating content just for the sake of creating content can lead to content shock. Audiences will ignore your marketing message if they’ve seen it and heard it all too often. So, does this mean you scale back on creating content and focus solely on optimizing your existing web pages? Not necessarily.

Content is Still Vitally Important

Content marketing is critically important to growing your business. You need great content that gets shared online and incentivizes your audience to act. The right content can build your brand, grow your audience, solidify your online footprint, generate opportunities, and become a reliable and consistent source of new leads years into the future. There’s simply no denying how important it is to create engaging content.

You Need Both: Great Content and Up-to-Date Landing Pages

Ultimately, the issue isn’t whether you should pause your content marketing efforts and simply focus on revamping landing pages. Instead, the focus must be on determining when to revamp landing pages and how and when you decide to replace those landing pages altogether with new content. In this case, it’s not one or the other – it’s both. Continually creating new content while keeping landing pages fresh and relevant is the best overall digital marketing strategy.

Keep Producing Important Pieces

Don’t stop creating new content. That’s not the idea here. Keep creating engaging content but make sure that content offers unique insight. Make sure it’s relevant to the times and incorporates emerging trends, news, and invaluable insight. Make sure it’s something your customers will want to read, share, and use. You have plenty of locations to post that content, so make sure you’re maximizing your company blog, website, and social media content feed.Combine the written word with thought-provoking videos, eye-catching infographics with relevant and timely statistics, high-definition imagery, and bullet points that help break up the flow of the content. Having a story to tell is what makes content work best. Tell your story, your customer’s story, or any market and industry story that will interest your audience.So, you need to keep generating content but also need to be able to revamp underperforming landing pages. Where do you start?

Understanding When to Revamp Underperforming Landing Pages

Let’s assume that your digital marketing team created the perfect pillar page. It had all the relevant information your customers and market needed. It was insightful, provocative, meaningful, defined a clear argument, and supported that argument with verifiable and undisputed facts.It was the ideal landing page, generating multiple leads and opportunities. However, now it’s stale. It’s no longer generating that all-important buzz. So, why is it no longer producing the results it once did? After all, nothing changed on the page, so what happened exactly?Most businesses don’t take the proper time to answer these questions. They don’t deep dive into how, why, and when a given landing page stopped producing returns. Sometimes it’s because they’re too busy creating other content pieces. Sometimes it’s because they’re too busy with other digital marketing tasks. However, sometimes it’s because they’re not entirely certain about the critical steps to refresh their landing pages.To help you on your way, here are some simple steps to revamping your landing pages and some insight into when to replace them entirely with new content.

1. Define Your Original Metrics

It should be relatively easy to define your original metrics. Focus on outlining the high returns when the landing page performed its best. Google Analytics is a must-use free tool that provides invaluable insight and data at a microscopic level. Even if you didn’t retain your original metrics, Google Analytics allows you to define metrics by date.Focus on analyzing the page’s original click-through rates (CTR), the number of actions customers took, and the time they spent on the page or bounce rate. The Google Search Console is another free tool with a search analytics dashboard. You’ll be able to define how clicks originated and the number of page impressions while also being able to analyze your CTR.Verifying how customers landed on your webpage. Understanding how your audience found your page involves reviewing the keywords and keyword phrases they used in searches and any outside links or advertisements that directed them to the webpage.

• Click-Through Rates: What were they originally? Your CTR can be defined by the day, week, month, or quarter.
• Actions Taken by Customers: This metric can include requests for quotes, forms filled out, subscriptions, requests for whitepapers, purchases, or any action taken by your customers as a result of your call-to-action (CTA).
• Time on Page/Bounce Rate: When your landing page was generating high returns, it did so because your audience found the content relevant and important. Your “time on page” will likely be high and your bounce rate low. You’ll compare this metric to how your page is performing now and should see a reduction in the time on the page and an increase in bounce rate – which is simply customers quickly leaving your page because it’s not quite what they were looking for.
• Keywords and Keyword Phrases: What were the keywords and keyword phrases customers used to find your landing page? You’ll need to define if these keywords are the same as used in the content and your online advertising campaigns.
• Geography and Demographics: Where did most of your customers come from? Were they a specific age demographic, or did they come from a particular country or state? Your content may have appealed to an age group that no longer finds the content relevant.

2. Compare Metrics to Today’s Results

You’ll now compare your original metrics to how your landing page is currently performing. Look for obvious areas where a decline has led to a loss of leads and opportunities. Again, the bounce rate will likely be higher and time on page lower, which could mean your content, keywords, and message is no longer relevant.This is the time to revamp older images, refresh videos, and deep dive into the argument or position your content has taken. You’ll want to define whether your content is current, whether internal and external links are still working as they should, and if any recent trends or market changes have made your content irrelevant.Seobility is a free online SEO checker that gives you a grade on your landing page. You’ll be able to immediately identify any broken links, images, or videos that take too long to load and an overall score for page load time. This tool also has a keyword and page ranking checker, giving you invaluable information on which page improvements to enact.

3. Make Improvements and Re-Crawl Your Website

At this time, you should have a list of changes to enact. The fastest approach is to make as many changes at one time as possible and then re-crawl your landing page with all the major search engines – Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Microsoft Edge, among others.The other approach takes much longer. It involves making incremental changes – or enacting changes in batches - and measuring results on each set of changes. For instance, you may choose to revamp all your keywords first and then schedule out the remaining changes like images and videos later. Ultimately, it all depends upon your time and availability.Regardless of what approach you choose, it’s more than likely that you’ll have to continually make periodic changes, and that’s the point. A static landing page that is rarely updated is guaranteed to lose its value. As you track the performance of your changes, you’ll gain greater insight into what works and why.

PBJ Marketing: Digital Marketing at its Best!

At PBJ Marketing, we understand that companies sometimes lack the resources needed to keep their content marketing and landing pages relevant. That’s why our SEO services are focused on producing a tailor-made plan that builds your brand, generates leads, and creates that all-important online buzz. If you would like to work with a customer-centric digital marketing partner that will always put your needs first, then contact us now.