Case Study: The ROI of Re-optimizing Content (Plus Bonus How-To)

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Weโ€™ve been re-optimizing Brafton’s blog content consistently since 2018. Itโ€™s been one of the main SEO strategies weโ€™ve used to increase our blog traffic from 20,000 to 200,000 monthly visitors over the last three years, and weโ€™re continuing with this strategy into 2022 (and probably beyond).

For the purpose of this study, we wanted to answer the question, โ€œHow well does content re-optimization work, and is it worth your time?โ€

But first, letโ€™s back up and get some definitions out of the way.

What is content re-optimization?

In its simplest form, content re-optimization is the process of updating existing content with new material in order to add value to the original piece.

There are many ways content can be updated. Here are some methods weโ€™ve used over the years:

  • Adding new visual content, like an infographic, to an existing blog to appeal to readers who are more visual learners.

  • Adding a video tutorial to help elaborate on a topic weโ€™re covering.

  • Replacing outdated examples featured in a roundup blog post with better, more recent examples.

  • Adding missing topic gaps that our competitors are covering but we arenโ€™t.

  • Completely re-writing the content in favor of a better target topic (a very drastic measure).

In all instances, weโ€™re adjusting existing content in some way to make it better for our audience. Ideally, that content will also perform better in organic search.

Why re-optimize content?

If youโ€™re anything like me, youโ€™ve probably invested significant time and energy into creating awesome content for your brand โ€” and just like me, you know exactly how much effort goes into every single word published. Thereโ€™s the planning, the research, the writing, the rounds of review, the copyediting, the proofing, the curation of helpful visuals, and finally clicking โ€œPublishโ€ once youโ€™re done. All of this takes time and participation from multiple stakeholders.

Itโ€™s exhausting. And expensive.

Itโ€™s in your best interests to protect the time and monetary investment youโ€™ve put into every single piece of content you create for your brand, and make sure it keeps performing at or beyond your expectations. This is why we re-optimize our content at Brafton. Because weโ€™ve found itโ€™s an incredibly cost-effective way to keep our content competitive and generate the business results we expect from our website.

Why this study was conducted

We know that our content re-optimization efforts can take credit for a portion of the organic traffic results weโ€™ve seen on our website. For this analysis, my goal was to calculate the exact impact content re-optimization was making on our blog performance.

Letโ€™s get into it!

Methodology

I focused strictly on written content updates that had been made to our blog posts between January 1, 2021, and October 31, 2021. Using this timeframe, I was able to use all or Clearscope) to see if there is room for improvement. If your content score is lower than the toolโ€™s recommended score, itโ€™s a hint that you probably have some missing topics to cover.

3. Check ranking changes/SERP-rank volatility to see whatโ€™s changed on page one. Take a look at the top 10 ranking positions and how those results have changed over time. A SERP with a lot of volatility or new competitors coming onto the first page is a good sign that youโ€™ll need to improve your content to stay competitive.

4. Look at the current results on page one and determine if you can still realistically rank there. If youโ€™ve been outranked for a SERP and you canโ€™t reasonably get back onto the first page, your efforts might be better spent elsewhere.

5. Estimate the traffic you might gain from your page-one ranking. Donโ€™t forget that clicks decline the farther down the page you rank.

6. Ask yourself: Is this good enough? If yes, then proceed to the re-optimization!

Walkthrough: How to tie content re-optimization to ROI

Now for the fun part โ€” diving into your own data to find out if your updates made a meaningful impact on your business goals.

Speaking of goals, youโ€™ll want to make sure to determine the goals that make the most sense to your business and what youโ€™re trying to accomplish with organic search before starting on this re-optimization strategy.

Some examples:

  • More clicks to the blog, year-over-year.

  • More website conversions from organic traffic.

  • Better brand awareness in search.

If youโ€™re just starting to re-optimize your content, I recommend bookmarking this article and coming back to this section later. While itโ€™s true that performing updates to your content may have an immediate impact on your content โ€” a jump in keyword position, perhaps โ€” youโ€™ll want a decent chunk of data to perform your analysis. And the only way youโ€™ll get that is with time.

Step 1: Choose content to analyze

Once youโ€™ve got a few months of data to work with, you can start your analysis. Say you re-optimized a few blog posts three months ago (and these blogs have been live on your website for at least six months). Add those URLs to a spreadsheet. Hereโ€™s the template I used for my study if you want to start there.

Step 2: Note publication date, and determine timeframes for analysis

Log your republish date for each article in the sheet. Then determine the timeframe for three months before your republish date and three months after (not including the actual republish date).ย 

Tip: You can search this in Google Search for an accurate answer, no calculator or calendar required:

Step 3: Pull your data

For each metric youโ€™re looking to measure, pull the data from the two separate timeframes:

Step 4: Analyze your data

It might look like steps 1-3 are quick and easy, but theyโ€™re surprisingly time-consuming and tedious. Once youโ€™re done youโ€™ll have a lovely block of data to analyze. Calculate the changes for each article individually, and in aggregate, to see how your optimization efforts paid off.