‘Tis the season for content refreshes!
Or at least that’s how it feels to me. This month, I’ve been inundated with requests to rewrite and refresh content from prospects and clients.
And I’m really happy about it. I love working on content marketing refreshes, which are the crucial next steps after a website content audit. I get to take content that isn’t really working for my clients and turn it into something impactful that helps their readers and supports their business goals.
Of course, brands love refreshes too. During a refresh, you get to take older or underperforming content and replace it with content that’s top-of-the-line, which quickly boosts the overall quality of your content marketing.
With that said, you need a refresh strategy to ensure you end up with content that’s significantly better than what you started with. So ask these 5 questions anytime you do a content marketing refresh for meaningful results.
Is the information up to date?
Of course, a refresh is a great way to update any facts and figures to reflect the latest research. But you should dig deeper than that. Think about what’s changed in health and wellness since it was written. Does the content reflect the “next normal” in wellness, or does it feel stuck in the past?
Take changing economic conditions, shifting consumer attitudes and advances in technology into account when doing a content refresh to ensure the new version truly feels fresh.
Are there more keyword opportunities?
One of the goals of a content refresh is to drive more organic traffic to your site, so re-examine reader intent to look for more keyword opportunities. Maybe there’s a key angle you missed the first time, and an opportunity to incorporate more keywords on the refresh.
Reader questions, in particular, make for great keywords. That’s because you have a chance for an excerpt for your content to appear as a featured snippet or in the “People Also Asked” section in search results.
So include questions in your content anytime it makes sense, and use H2 and H3 tags to make them stand out — both to readers and to Google.
Should you switch up the formatting?
That brings me to my next point: ensuring your refreshed content is easy to read as well as informative.
Good formatting not only helps readers find the information they’re looking for, it helps them understand it. If you’re trying to write about complex medical or wellness topics, formatting helps you convey them in an approachable, easy-to-digest way. And, as you’ve probably guessed, formatting helps Google “read” your site too, which means it’s good for SEO.
Use clear, keyword-optimized subheads liberally, experiment with bullet points to make lists easier to read, and break down long paragraphs into short ones to keep your content skimmable.
What content should you create next?
I’ll tell you a secret: refreshes are one of the best ways to fill your editorial calendar. Not just because you can republish and repromote the fresh content — though you definitely should! — but because they can be a goldmine of new ideas.
Maybe there’s a key point that deserves its own post, or a related concept you could address in another piece of content. Maybe some of the points from your content would make a great infographic, or the whole post could be adapted to a short video or podcast. Or, maybe, reading your older content just reminds you of great ideas you forgot about but can now mix into your content strategy.
Let the refresh double as a brainstorming session and you’ll have plenty of ideas for the next quarter.
Does the content reflect your brand voice?
Sometimes, content needs a refresh because it just feels off. In health writing, that often means it feels a bit too sterile, academic or unwelcoming. A refresh gives you a chance to warm up the copy and infuse it with your brand personality, so readers come away with valuable insights and, crucially, a good impression of your brand.
Brand voice is the hardest part of a refresh to get right. That’s why a refresh is often most effective if you invest in the right writer (at least, in my admittedly-biased opinion). A great writer will not only help the content get found in search and address readers’ concerns, they’ll also make sure it starts a relationship with readers and supports your business goals.
Need help conducting a content marketing refresh?
If your content marketing needs a refresh, or want to conduct a website content audit to identify content that could benefit from updating, I can help.
Whenever you’re ready, fill out my brief consultation questionnaire to tell me a little about your brand and content marketing, and we can set up a free 15-minute call to chat about how to achieve your goals.
