Have you ever seen a kaitenzushi (conveyor belt sushi) restaurant in action? Instead of a full team of waitstaff, they employ a conveyor system that parades a series of dishes past customers who grab whichever plates strike their fancy. Today’s online readers’ content diets are a bit like this: Between algorithmic social feeds, organic search, and embedded links, readers rarely encounter content in a chronological—or even just logical—order. They pick and choose off the conveyor, depending on what happens to be passing by at the moment. 

According to Vox Senior Correspondent Matthew Yglesias, “On the modern web, content tends to arrive via miscellaneous streams rather than coherent chunks. So the meaning of strict chronology is breaking down regardless of what publishers do.”

That’s why Vox has been experimenting with refreshing “timeless” stories—what’s known as “evergreen journalism”—since 2015. While some news stories are best reported in the moment, other articles maintain relevance for a long period of time, especially if they’re periodically updated. The same is true for “timeless” blog posts and other evergreen content. Yglesias sums it up best, “If we can use our archives as a way to deliver more great pieces to today's audiences, then that's a huge win—for us and for them,” he says. 

In this post, I’ll explore some of the reasons why I’m working to update Find A Way Media’s old content—and why you should make updating your own archives a priority. 

Information changes: New reports get published, stats fall out-of-date, and links break. Not only that, but your writing prowess grows with time and experience. I’ve written another post about the bad writing habits I discovered when I started updating Find A Way Media’s old blog posts—and oh boy, are there some embarrassing ones. 

Unpolished, dated content is a huge turn-off for readers: An Edelman-LinkedIn study found that more than half of C-suite executives lost respect for an organization when its thought leadership content “was not high quality, insightful, or relevant.” Yet readers interact with old content all the time—HubSpot’s Pamela Vaughan discovered that 76 percent of the company’s monthly blog views came from posts that were published before the current month. 

Refreshing your old content is important because it allows you to fix your mistakes, polish your prose, mend broken links, and ensure your information is still accurate—all things your readers will appreciate.The same study I mentioned above found that decision makers and executives rank relevant, digestible, and current among the top qualities they look for in thought leadership content. And as Vaughan says, “If people are going to continue finding your older content through search engines, don’t you want it to be fresh and up-to-date?”

Another good reason to update old content? It’ll save you money. 

It’s no secret new content is expensive to produce, both in terms of money and time. According to HubSpot, it takes a typical content writer between 1-2 hours to write a 500-word blog post—though the report doesn’t specify whether that estimate includes time spent coming up with the idea in the first place, search engine optimization, and/or editing. (I doubt it.) Even if it does, that means writing a blog post which hits the optimal length for both SEO and readability—according to Yoast, a popular SEO plugin, between 700-1000 words—can easily eat up half of your day. 

While you can outsource your content production to save time, a reputable agency or freelancer will cost you (sorry, but those $50 Craigslist bloggers probably won’t cut it). Given you’ve already put in the effort to create your existing content, it makes sense to get the full value by refreshing it regularly. 

Not to mention that hindsight is 20/20. Looking through your archives with the benefit of data and analytics will allow you to identify which pieces did well the first time and prioritize updating your best-performing content. With a little attention every so often, your old gems can continue to generate value for years to come.  

Hand-in-hand with updating comes repromotion. When Vox repromoted 88 articles they had updated, they captured the attention of 500,000 readers, new and old. Many of the readers who had shared the articles on social media the first time even shared them again. 

I asked Danny Greer, Director of Marketing at Close, how marketers can make the most of existing content. Here’s what he had to say: “The key to extracting the full value out of your content is by having a repeatable promotion and repurposing playbook. After all, content is only as good as the way it’s promoted.” 

He continues, “You shouldn't reinvent the promotion wheel with each piece of content you create. At a bare minimum your playbook should include sharing on social now and for multiple times in the future, and a plan to reach out to influencers and external sites that can benefit from, and are most likely to share your content with their audience.” 

And here’s where the benefit of hindsight comes in again: You shouldn’t pay to promote something that didn’t perform well the first time around—be strategic about picking the best pieces from your archives to focus your repromotion efforts. Thoughtfully updating your content and then re-sharing it will allow you to reach new audiences, as well as existing readers who might have missed it the first time. 

Search engines value “freshness.” Periodically updating ensures your old content stays current, helping you keep your place in the rankings and avoid organic traffic decay. 

But it’s the repromotion part that’s really crucial. That’s because, as Greer told me: “Too many content marketers concern themselves only with on-site SEO. That's only half the battle.” While there are things you should do to improve your on-site SEO when updating old content, like doing keyword research and fixing broken links, how your content performs also depends on external factors, known as “off-site SEO.” Think of it this way: On-site SEO is what you do to make your content search-engine friendly, whereas off-site SEO is what others do to show that your content is trustworthy, such as linking back to it from reputable websites. 

“To really do well in search you need to focus on off-site SEO, driving external links and engagement on your content as soon as it goes live,” Greer explains. “Nailing your on-site SEO is meaningless without the authoritative signals of sites linking in and traffic.” His advice for content marketers? When repromoting an updated piece of content, reach out to influencers and partners who can drive awareness and share links back to your site. You can also think about your own content ecosystem, “Have you created blog posts on similar topics in the past? If so, update the old post with a link to the new post,” he says. 

And, “If you have multiple posts on a single subject matter, consider pulling sections out from each to create one ‘definitive’ or ‘guide’ style blog post and enrich that post with additional information. These types of posts are SEO magnets.”

When the online conveyor belt serves up our content to hungry readers, we’re making sure it’s as fresh and interesting as it can be. Our evergreen content strategy allows us to ensure the best possible experience for our audience while saving money and boosting SEO.