Optimizing existing content: what should you pay attention to?

SEO is rarely a focal point from the very beginning when creating content for a website. When companies later develop an awareness of the important criteria for creating content that is also optimized for search engines, the question arises: How should existing content be handled? Is it risky to subsequently revise content, potentially losing rankings and traffic as a result? What must be considered during optimization to prevent this? Our tips provide you with an overview.

Current Status: Evaluating Existing Content

To assess whether optimizing certain technical articles, blog posts, categories, product pages, or other content pages is worthwhile, you should first evaluate them:

• Organic Traffic: How many visitors are already coming to the page via unpaid search results? Google Analytics provides information here and shows the development. If the page receives a significant number of visitors through the organic channel (compared to the entire domain and other subpages), caution is advised and further evaluations are important:

• Rankings: How does the page rank on average? While only of limited significance, it is still interesting to evaluate the old "Search Queries" report. Here you can also see the keywords for which the individual page is already found.

• Keywords: Based on the search query analysis, it is worth checking: Is the page actually being found for the search terms that are especially important to you for this specific page? If so, you should focus on maintaining or even improving these rankings. You might also find that the results are already optimal and you would be better off concentrating your optimization efforts on other subpages.

• Conversions: Ideally, you have set a primary goal or multiple goals for each subpage. What should the visitor do on this page? Read more articles? Sign up for the newsletter? Make contact? Visit your social media channels, become a fan, and follow? Purchase the described product? Once you have defined your goals (and set up your Google Analytics accordingly), you should evaluate whether visitors to the page in question are actually taking the desired action. If not, there is clearly a need for optimization, regardless of how well the page is found through search engines.

Revision: Keyword Selection and Optimization

If you have determined that the analyzed page actually needs optimization, in addition to structural aspects (correct headline tagging), the question of important keywords arises. Although in 2015 the strict optimization for a single keyword is less relevant, increasing the relevance for a thematic context is, and keywords are still an important basis for this.

If the page already ranks well for keywords that are sensible and important, you should make sure to retain these during the revision. The title tag and headlines are particularly important here. If you want to optimize for other or additional keywords, compare the potential of the old and new keywords:

• What is the search volume?

• Which keyword is more relevant/important for you as a company and the corresponding page?

• Which keyword is closer to the desired conversion (e.g., purchasing in the online shop)?

Once you have identified the 1-2 most important keywords and defined additional search terms that are important for the thematic context, examine how well they are placed on the page:

• Metadata: Title Tag and Meta Description

• Headlines

• Beginning of the text

• During the rest of the content

• At the end of the text

• In image attributes and captions

Determining a specific "keyword density" has not been useful for years. However, the fact remains: You will only rank for a term in exceptional cases if it is not placed anywhere on the page. (This could change in the future with semantic search, but it is not there yet.) And still, headlines and the title tag are important places to include keywords, if only to give visitors who search for these terms the feeling that they are in the right place with you.

Note: The topic of conversion optimization is so complex that it should not be addressed here. The reasons why a user does not convert and how this can be improved are varied and can only be determined through a detailed analysis.

Success Control: What Has the Optimization Achieved?

After revising a page's content, it is important to regularly evaluate how the numbers develop as a result of the optimization. Google Analytics (or another professional web analytics tool) and the webmaster tools provide answers to questions such as:

• Has the traffic from Google organic increased?

• For which terms is the page found?

• Does the page still rank for the old keywords?

• How do the rankings of the new keywords develop?

How Can We Support You?

Would you like to further educate yourself and your editorial team in the field of search engine optimization? Our experienced SEO experts are happy to train you in small groups, in a practical and individualized manner tailored to your needs. Learn more!