Assuming one of your goals is keeping your blog content relevant, you should get in the habit of performing regular content assessments. Why? Contrary to popular belief, blogs can age and become outdated as inbound marketing practices evolve over time.
Not to mention, Google Search algorithm updates are constantly rolling out and raising the bar for what’s considered as acceptable content and linking practices. For this reason, it’s imperative to keep your eyes peeled for these 4 signs your business blog content needs an update!
#1: You Have Giant Blocks Of Text
Writing for the web is very different than writing for print. There are many elements to writing effectively for the web, but the most important is not producing block content. It’s best described as one giant block/paragraph of text, as opposed to short paragraphs.
Writing this way is a big turn off for web readers, who are often using mobile devices with small screens. They’d rather have the ability to scan a web page.
Try to stick to one or two sentence paragraphs of 50 words or less. It’s perfectly reasonable to have one sentence paragraphs, but don’t feel limited by that. Use subheads to break up long paragraphs if necessary.
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Read this: 6 Steps for Writing Simple Copy That Sells
#2: You Experience A Drop In Blog Visits
Perhaps the most noticeable sign that it’s time for a change is a noticeable drop in blog visits. Whether it’s anonymous web visitors or your subscribers, when people stop coming back to read your content, you have to act. But what should you change? How do you know?
Re-examine the keywords your campaign is based around. Are they getting sufficient search traffic? Are your blog topics relevant to the pain points of your buyer personas? Do you even have buyer personas in place?
If your content is more ‘company-centric’ than ‘customer-centric,’ chances are that your entire blog strategy is in desperate need of a complete overhaul.
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Keyword Research - Watch this video on using UberSuggest to conduct keyword research. It’s an awesome tool that will cut your keyword research time in half. Here’s another video on using Google Suggest and related searches for the same thing.
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Buyer Personas - Check out our blog on how to create buyer personas.
#3: Your Blog Has A Poor Conversion Rate
The point of a business having a blog is to attract visitors THEN convert them into leads and ultimately paying customers. While this is the “long game,” you should be able to see short gains in the form of a conversion rate.
After calculating visit-to-lead and lead-to-customer conversion rates, you will have a good understanding of where to make blog improvements. If your lead-to-customer conversion rate is problematic, increase traffic by creating more middle and bottom of the funnel content, such as free trials, webinars, and consultations.
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Conversion Calculator - If you’re a Hubspot customer, use their toolset to calculate conversion rates. If you don’t use Hubspot, try using this conversion rate calculator.
#4: You Are Not Using Calls-to-Action
EVERY business blog that seeks to generate leads MUST have call to actions (CTA’s). This is non-negotiable. If you’re not using them, that’s a clear sign your blog is due for an update. Why? When a reader comes to end of a blog post, they have no idea what to do next.
They need a prompt to help them move to the next step in your sales funnel. If you don’t have CTA buttons, readers are likely leaving your site without taking any action.
Outdated blogs can be updated by adding a few CTAs to the end of popular blog posts first. This is the type of low-hanging fruit that will quickly kick start your lead generation.
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Whether you decide to refresh your business blogs every quarter or once a year, the first step is to recognize the warning signs. In this blog, we’ve identified only four of those signs, but there are many others we could’ve listed.
What are some other signs that indicate a blog update is in order? Tell us how you track your blog’s effectiveness, or lack thereof, in the comment section below.
