It's a fact of life: we get better at what we do with time. Do you use that to your advantage when it comes to your site's content? Whether you're riding the wave of a successful post or improving what you've done before, republishing is something that should be on your mind and your to-do list. And what's more, Google will actually reward you for doing it!
In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand explores the how and why of republishing, helping you set goals for yourself and your content.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're chatting about republishing and why Google rewards republishing so much. I think this is actually an underutilized tactic in SEO and in content creation. We have this idea that we make our content checklist, and we say, "All right, these are the topics I need to cover. These are the keywords I'm targeting, and this is the audience I'm trying to reach."
Then once you create that piece of content, you kind of go, "All right, let's see how it does." Then, however it does, you kind of go, "Okay, let's try and make the next piece better. We already took our shot at that piece of content."
But that does not have to be how it is. Google actually rewards republishing. So do, by the way, audiences. If a piece of content is a hit or if you're sure that a piece of content could be a hit, or that an audience would appreciate and enjoy it, I guarantee they're going to appreciate and enjoy it if you update that piece of content or produce something better on that topic.
Same thing is true of social media. You can see a lot of the big content sites, particularly those that are very, very successful these days, your BuzzFeeds and that kind of thing, doing pieces of content over and over and over again. Basically, finding a formula, hitting it, and updating that content once they do it.
So, let me talk about why this happens. I'm using the example of guinea pig food, as opposed to guinea pigs for food. You could do either way.
Here I've registered the domain name -- I haven't actually -- RandsFurryFriends.com. I've got my guinea pig food content that I put in my guinea pig section on their diet. That was produced in 2010. But five years later, I'm going, "Man, that content is getting old. It's not performing the way I want it to.
I'm going to publish a new piece of content targeting those same keywords, on the blog this time of RandsFurryFriends.com, and that's going to get October 15th or whenever that's coming out." This works really well because Google does a few things here.
Why It Works
- First off, they're often testing. They're verifying: When a piece of content comes out, did it do well? Google might place that piece of content on the first page of the results and then see how it performs with a small subset of searchers. That could be personalized, or that subset could be determined a bunch of different ways. But if it performs well, if it's the case that we really liked how engagement looked on this SERP, a lot of people were clicking on that link, they weren't clicking the Back button, they seemed to be happy with the results, then Google's going to say, "Hey, maybe that page deserves to stay here long-term." If you never republish, you don't know whether the problem was that you didn't earn the engagement and the user happiness and searcher happiness that Google needed in order to keep you on that front page. Maybe you had all the other ranking signals you would have needed, but you just didn't get there with searcher engagement.
- Fresh publishing often provides its own rankings boost. You can see this generally speaking. So Russ Jones from Moz has done an analysis of SERPscape and seen that in queries where Google is showing dates on multiple results in the SERPs, there tends to be a high correlation with positive rankings performance and showing a recent date. So we know that Google really likes fresh content for certain kinds of search queries, and it's almost certainly the case that even for those where it's not providing a massive boost, it's providing some value. Being the most recent on a topic is probably going to give you some value and benefit. So that's another one that helps us here.
- When you publish multiple times, you're building up that topical authority, that topical association that Google has with your site. So they might say, "Huh, Rand's Furry Friends offers a lot of content, but he publishes quite often and quite in-depth about guinea pigs in particular, and so maybe we should start associating Rand's Furry Friends with guinea pigs and show him for more and more guinea pig-types of search queries." That can broaden the reach of any given particular piece of content to the keyword universe that you can potentially rank for, which again, awesome. Really nice to have that.
- Multiple pieces of content tend to yield multiple opportunities to earn links, earn amplification, earn those social shares, earn engagement, and earn ranking signals of all kinds. So when I produce this, I've got another shot at reaching my audience and getting all the signals, all the links, and all the stuff that I need to rank well if I didn't do it the first time. Or I can do it additionally.
- Over time, you or your content team, you're going to get better at this. Five years ago, I guarantee, the content that I created for Whiteboard Friday, which you're watching right now, for our blog, it was not nearly as polished, as high quality as what you're getting to experience today on the Moz blog. We've gotten better at this stuff.
Potential Processes
There are three different ways, potential processes that you can go about when you're doing the republishing thing. These shouldn't all be done together. You should choose the one that makes the most sense for you and your situation.
So first off, (A) multiple pieces that are published one after another—that time frame could be anything between them—targeting slight keyword variations and slight content variations. So right here I've got the 10 foods your guinea pig will love and guinea pig food, just the broad article. I might actually link to each of these between the two of them. This one, it's a little more listicle-kind of format. This one's a little more informational, knowledge-based.
The idea, hopefully, what I really want to do is get one of these ranking in the top two or three results. Then once I produce the other one, if it ranks on page one, we know how Google treats that. They'll put it directly below. So they won't have you rank number two and you rank number eight. No, you'll rank number two, and if you rank number eight, boom, they'll bump you up to rank number three.
So now I dominate two and three in the top three results. That's going to boost my click-through rate. That's going to give me a ton of opportunity to earn those searchers. Just awesome. That's the dominate search results approach.
(B) is replacing old content with new. So essentially, I've produced XA, and I'm going to replace it with XB. So I might say, "This page, I'm putting this content on there. The URL is going to stay the same." The idea being I'm updating and improving that content. I have a second chance at earning links, earning amplification signals, and hopefully getting better engagement. Maybe if I'm already ranking well, I can improve that.
I do this a lot with Moz blog posts. If I get an email from someone and I'm referencing an old post, and I notice that old post is just a little messy or not exactly what I'd offer today, I'll go in and update it. Sometimes that only takes me 10 or 15 minutes. Sometimes it takes me an hour or two. But then I can broadcast it again. I can tweet it. I can put in on LinkedIn. I put it on Google+. I put it on Facebook. I share it around. That broadcast activity often earns lots of new links pointing to it, and I see that pretty consistently, at least with my audience.
(C) I can redirect old content to new. So potentially I can say, "Hey, you know what? I'm producing this new piece on 10 neat foods your guinea pig will love. This old article I just don't love anymore, but I want to get the rankings benefit and all the signals to this new page that this old one has." So all these links and wonderful things that were coming in here, I want to redirect them, and so I'm going to use a 301 to point A over to B.
This has worked for us many, many times with big content pieces that we've produced here at Moz, everything from the Ranking Factors to our industry survey to lots and lots of other things. We'll even do this when we produce a new blog post that is really replacing an old one. We'll go ahead and 301 redirect, or potentially rel=canonical that old one, so make sure that old one is still accessible for someone if they want to see the historical version, but send all the ranking signals, all the links, and all the traffic to the new one.
Like I said, these three, you should choose which goal you're trying to solve and then pick the republishing process that works best for you.
All right everyone. Look forward to seeing you in the comments and to seeing you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
This is one of those videos you must pause and just delve into every aspect Rand just mentioned.
The "Dominate Search results approach" is a HUGE opportunity that a lot of us miss just because we're either afraid of targeting similar keywords or are too obsessed with just publishing new stuff, forgetting previous gems we created and how to take advantage of them.
I won't say it's easy to finally obtain that perfect formula, but it’s time spent wisely.
Great WBF.
BTW - you should also watch old WBF Pinpoint vs. Floodlight Content and Keyword Research Strategies - Whiteboard Friday because both are completing each other.
Totally agree.
Thanks for the link Peter Nikolow
Thanks you very Much Peter for the provided link. Appreciated.
Hello Rand,
I can agree with you on republished the content. But There are some question coming in mind, Those I would love to ask you
1. Is there any need to change the permalink of the republished post? or Is it would be same as the previous. Because when we change the content in the existing post, it would be completely new and search engine loves new and fresh content and according to that he index the post.
2. Most of the bloggers or 70 to 80% people are rewrite the content from others popular topics and publish them their blog. We can say That is not a fresh content. So If we again republishing the content again , Will Google take it as Content spinning or Not?
Please put some lights on it.
Hi Manmohan
About your first question: Your permalinks are precious. Google already knows them, people might already have shared or linked back to these links in the past, so why throw them away? You might wish to keep them even or especially when you updated your content. You could even re-use (recycle ;) ) your links if you'd wish to change most of the content for a certain topic. All you have to do is make sure Google gets a hint that there's something new on that old link from 2001, so do everything to make Googlebot crawl and notice your link again.
Thank you for information Gianna Brachetti-Truskawa.
Hello Manmohan, IMHO permalinks should stay and if you republishing same content you have two options that are already mentioned in article -> put it as new updated content on new URL and promote it again with your new thoughts. Best practice would be for some cases that you mention your old content a republish it with new addons. If the update is huge you should think about 301 that is safe way how to redirect older post to new one.
Agree with Gianna Brachetti-Truskawa. permalinks are optaining our PA value and if you rename them the PA value would be at "0" and our current article would be as new born article.
I'm agree with you, if you want that Google rewards you, you need to do the republishing in the best way. I think that is not a good practise if you don't control all the situations because you can win a penalty from Google more easy than a reward.
Solid points, Rand. A bit counterintuitive at first, seeing as there’s been such a shift (thankfully!) away from the old SEO tactic of creating multiple pages covering the exact same topic, in the exact same way. But I think the distinction between static category or landing pages vs. blog post pages is key. An approach I like & use often is to create very in-depth & more fact-based content for category/internal landing pages, then utilize blog posts to share supplemental information - maybe opinion/theory-based, insightful, etc types of pieces about that category/internal page's main topic (similar to Process A).
I’m pretty sure I picked that up from analyzing the Moz site structure years ago… The Algorithm Changes page or Link Building Beginners Guide (for examples) act as a category/static pages + the hundreds of blog posts providing additional detail/insights about search algos/changes or link building/earning (that all of us rely on) = Moz is the authority on the topics (& has a super strong internal linking strategy). Ranking #1 for “Algorithm Changes” and “Link Building" is a pretty good indicator that the structure & ongoing publishing on a given topic works for boosting search visibility & is just the right thing to do when you are (or are trying to become) a resource thousands (millions?) rely on.
Again, I go back to using academia as an example. If you’re a scientist/doctor/etc of a particular field, you’re going to constantly produce content about your ongoing research & findings - further validating your topical authority. And no one would question why you’re covering the same topic. You’re a subject matter expert, it’s what you do!
One of the best times to "republish" is when a topic that you already have on the site is hitting the news. That is when searcher interest is high. It is also when interest is high among people who share your content. So, when related topics hit the news, quickly update your old content, address the news in your opening paragraph or in a callout box at the top of the page. Then "repromote" that content on your own site, to your tribe, or to people who liked your original work on this topic.
Hey Rand, once again big thanks for the #WBF
I always tried to republish my evergreen blog posts as you know from time to time, things need to be updated. Your mailing address, your closet, your media collection.Things get obsoleted, stale, and irrelevant it's merely the way of our continuously changing world.It's very easy enough to change your address, mobile and all, as same it's also pretty easy to update your content.
The most important reason to update the content is that not everyone who reads your blog now, was reading your blog months and years earlier. And if they were, it also does not indicate they read each and every post you published. By updating and resurfacing several of your older but high-performing evergreen blog posts, you can prolong the life of your finest blog content in addition to boost the results it continues to achieve over time.
Great Idea Rand, I have a Web design and Development site and having so many content, which can be reproduced, Can you give me suggestion that which one A,B or C process will help us more. Most of the content are technology based and we can always upgrade that content with time period.
Sometimes, republishing alone isn't necessarily enough. Over time, content can become outdated or simply need to be freshened up. In these instances, it's a good idea to give it an update. Techniques such as adding more images, expanding what's there, and making sure the content isn't outdated can give your republishing efforts even more life.
Good point, and I agree. Many times I need to go through some of my older content and give them a refresher to make sure they are up to date and relevant.
I really like the idea of taking a topic and expanding on it later. Especially when it helps users answer more questions. I think as SEOs, we get caught up in trying to make sure our content has all the elements possible to rank and, unfortunately, let the users needs fall short. By having more information, you definitely give your users the "one-stop-shop" ability with your site which will naturally prove worth to search engines and make rankings come more naturally. It definitely creates a win/win situation when done appropriately. Thanks for expanding on what you touched on a bit at Pubcon!
And it is solving the main issue, that keeps informations up to date coz as we all know this is changing on daily basis.
Rand,
Some good points covered in this WBF, it's same as we update our-self by reading posts and gaining knowledge everyday with the change of time as well as generation. So, a good content is also one piece, does not matter it's been written before two years back, we can update that anytime we wish (but in proper way as rand recommend)..It called smart play in the marketing game and even people loving only updated version these days ;)
Thanks & Keep sharing :)
Thanks for the overview. I have been doing this for my 10 plus year old site lately and am seeing encouraging results.
So... would you change the original "published on" date or not?
Interesting article! In the situation where you want to update an existing article by changing it's content rather then making a new post, what should be done with the publication date of the post (in schema.org meta for example)? Of course it would be nice if the date the post was last updated would be displayed in the serps instead of the original publication date.
Yes, I too have the same doubt. First of all, does showing date in SERPs increase or decrease the CTR of the Google user. Let's say we are showing date, but how to show the updated date in SERPs. I have seen some sites and their posts (for eg. shoutmeloud.com), with their date updated in SERPs whenever they update or modify their content. How is this done?
So Rand, can we expect this article to be republished in future? ;-)
Great blog post. I totally agree with you in the value of republishing. In my view, it should be done naturally though otherwise its open to abuse and Google will clamp down on this in terms of value. I think its also important to make sure you're making significant changes, just updating a letter or two is surely not going to be as valuable as someone who is adding/editing multiple items on an existing post - i.e. images, alt tags, meta-descriptions, adding additional content, adding video/images etc.
Cheers,
Rob
Managing Director at https://www.odysseynewmedia.com
Seems like a great advice by Rand. I have heard about it on other blogs too. I think it was Neil's blog. You people have tested it all and I too did it on one of my old blogs. Don't know how but yes I had improved rankings for that page.
Thank you very much for the post and the video Rand.
What I am wondering:
Is just updating the content enough?
Or do you need a last modified timestamp (personally I do that anyway with schema.org)?
Or do you need to actually change the publication date?
I remember reading recently (was it on moz?) that changing the publication date in wordpress can actually make google think that this is a new post and having it thus appear for QDF-queries. That practice seems a bit shady, though, if nothing is changed. I could see a slight argument for when there are substantial updates that could just as well be a completely new, up-to-date article.
these shares on the site is very nice, a lot of work to create a continuous track my site, thank you.
Hello Rand Fishkin,
Another great article. I would say republishing is all about content (post) with accuracy, freshness, and comprehensiveness. Put all the keyword study you've done to function by converting-optimizing and make a blog post with keyword-based method. Blog Subscribers also revisit if the content will update.
Republishing with good information and improved content is good for users. Good One Rand
Great WBF Rand as always, well I personally think it is not just about republishing your content but to gain a topical authority over a particular niche. I have tested with numerous clients that sometimes even refreshing the existing content produces even dramatic results then the newly posted ones.
Your information that used for me.
Rgs
Great tips on content republishing. Alot of content publishers are doing that.
Derek, Product Development @ juyyo
Thanks for the insightful article Rand.
Does setting up rel=canonical send some ranking signals? Or I didn't get it right?
Thanks, Rand!
My organisation usually go for option "b" in the update process. We have a system that notifies the content owners of each page to update the information and it works really well.
Is Google Search Console the best tool to use if you want Google to show the date in the SERP snippet?
Depending on the authority and main topics of the site, I'd be concerned about keyword cannibalisation with "multiple pieces targeting slight variations", but I agree with almost everything else. Refreshing old content can work well - I do it myself and sometimes spot a grammatical error I didn't see before. I probably read articles every week that would benefit from a slight update.
Great post, thank you!
Thanks for the video, Rand!
I love it, as usual.
I am sure going to try B) and C) and see how it works with my new old content.
ATB,
VS
This is great stuff Rand!
I already though to re-create my old contents in 2016. However, I was a little bit confused as there was no guide about it. Now I am confident that the result will be positive. Thanks Rand.
Still I have a question, what if I create a do-follow link from my old post to the new one, instead of 301 redirect? Will this process work well?
Thanks in advance
@MSI
Do follow from an old article will send some of the ranking power.
301 will send about 90%.
I hope it helps.
Thanks Rand, this is so useful - I will be trying this out with one of our older posts this week!
(p.s. Love the guinea pig peru example!)
Thank you for this valuable seo information.
We must also have time to try :)
I like this post. But republishing methoed is good for all again.
Another great WBF! Thanks, Rand.
Hello rand ,i have one question for you i have web design company - https://digibrand.com.sg/ - which one you suggested A,B or C.Please update me
Thanks Arun
Thanks for the informative post, specially the potential processes that anyone can follow during the republishing the content.
Good Video @Rand.. It helps me to understand how to re-publish the old and well performing blog posts with new content.
Hi Rand,
Great, Keep up the good work.
Hi Rand,
Great WBF again, I have to say I do watch them every Friday.
This is taking the same approach as Wikipedia does, they like to re-fresh their content over and over again on the same Url creating good authorative content on which ever subject they are talking about.
We started doing this several months ago and are seeing good results. We are also experimenting with the steps in Anthony D. Nelson blog, we are documenting our findings to see if we achieve the same results.
Keep up the good work.
regards,
EZINDAGI INFOSOFT
[link removed by editor]
Hi Rand,
I am the co-founder of web design company in India but my question is here will content republishing help us to improve alexa rankings.
[Link removed by editor.]
@Rand.
I really like re-phrasing content, so that it looks new.
But I have doubts about the 3rd method you mentioned.
For example, I have some posts which gets very less traffic.
I have a few posts related to these, with medium traffic. Can I 301 re-direct the less ones to these medium ones.
Will it have positive effect or negative effect from organic traffic point of view.
Also leaving the canonical url to the old one, and 301 to the new post, will it create confusion to the search engines.
Please reply.
Thank you! i'm considering to update some of the old content on my website.
I test republishing on my site and found republishing and creating more complete article about the issue has good impact on page ranking. also i add date of republishing to my page and google also show that date on search result.
Writing original content is hard! Well, if it was easy, anybody could rank, right?
I agree with almost everything. I like this"This has worked for us many, many times with big content pieces that we've produced here at Moz, everything from the Ranking Factors to our industry survey to lots and lots of other things. We'll even do this when we produce a new blog post that is really replacing an old one. We'll go ahead and 301 redirect, or potentially rel=canonical that old one, so make sure that old one is still accessible for someone if they want to see the historical version, but send all the ranking signals, all the links, and all the traffic to the new one."
See also visit my site..https://k4techworld.blogspot.com/
Republishing doesn't matter if there's a good content :P
ofcourse Rand mentioned the same here. If the content has higher bounce rate and you want to decrease it. That time you need to rich the article. what is am doing that after publishing the article i follow the bounce rate of it. If it is higher than 50, it means my audience are not happy with it. So i make it rich with media or infographic.
Hi Rand,
Great Topic Covered in this WhiteBoard Friday! I always love watching your WBFs. Great Presentation + Great Explanation. Loved it.
I have seen the positive results with my website too.. I am having 2 pages in SERP for single keyword.. and because of this i got many organic traffic on my website.
Hi Rand, I love this #WBF and got some valuable tips on republishing the content and I am sure Google will love it because of fresh content. We should not change the permalink or Url structure, if we re-write the Url then we loose the page authority, back-links, age of url and after all may be we need to redirect old page to new page bcz, Google will confuse if we have same information in 2 pages, I fill this is not good for Google.
Great Whiteboard Rand,
I have long enjoyed the process of republishing; providing fresh up-to-date information on a product as the industry changes, customer's use it, or how we manufacture it, works well for us. Our blog is a great place for republishing and I also like option B) for "refreshing" old product page content. I agree it provides another opportunity to touch all accounts, internal and social as well as our customer base.
Thanks,
Joe
Hi Rand,
Great WBF again, I have to say I do watch them every Friday.
This is taking the same approach as Wikipedia does, they like to re-fresh their content over and over again on the same Url creating good authorative content on which ever subject they are talking about.
We started doing this several months ago and are seeing good results. We are also experimenting with the steps in Anthony D. Nelson blog, we are documenting our findings to see if we achieve the same results.
Keep up the good work.
Regards
I am with you Rand, the same way our views on matters change as time progresses, we should think about our site's content as well, it needs improvements and updates.
Hi Rand,
We have got several blogposts from 2-3 years ago where we talk about content marketing. While the story we were telling in these old blogposts isn't fault, many things have changed through the years and many new sorts of content have come up. Would it be a good idea to launch a serie of blogs where we have a review to these older blogposts and discuss what has been changing or which new elements have come up the last years.
Or do you think it's better to just update these blogposts?
Thanks in advance,
Seppe Van Hoof
Good, actionable post. One thing I would add: As you are deciding which content to republish, look at Google Analytics to view older posts that continually have high traffic.
Do we have any data to back this by chance?
I know this will be very hard to maintain and ensure... as any republishing will require new content..and any new increases in rankings will be attributed to the "added content".
Maybe we can just make very minimal changes and consistently "update", and check google's cache for updates. Then we can analyze other non-relevant rankings to the "added content (one random keyword)" and see if this "republishing" pushes the other keywords rankings up.
Just my 2 cents. Great article nonetheless.
So I guess at some point in future, this post will be re-published with updates too :)
Great post and analysis. I totally agree with you Rand. Re-publishing content when it makes sense to do so. I think updates need to be significant for Google though, simply tweaking an image may not yield significant ranking changes. However making additions to content, adding new images, updating titles & descriptions etc. could really pay-off.
Thanks for the post. Im exactly going to create a video and an another piece regarding the same targeted keywords and embed into the article and as content i will write couple of paragraphs regarding the video script so people can stay more on the article and watch the summary video of the article and enjoy the post.
Thanks for the point...
Good post!
Hi Rand, I watch the complete video of this week and very glad with your presentation. I am also working for my client which is based in india, he is actually freelance web developer , can you suggest the new way to get back links.
Thanks for sharing.
Hi Amit, I'd recommend checking out our Beginner's Guide to Link Building. :)
This is awesome! @Rand
I teach my class attendees how to re-purpose their blog content to social media all of the time. I never mention this because, I thought Google would not smile upon the duplicate content on LinkedIn's publisher platform - as I think of it much like a blog post. I have reused only one of my blog posts on the LinkedIn publisher platform, but was not really comfortable doing so. These are some really, really GREAT tips! Thanks a bunch...
Regards: