The online search landscape is constantly evolving. With this comes new search trends, algorithm updates and more competition. Failing to keep your content up to date can lead to content decline.
As search intent changes, so should your content. While you may have written a blog post that sits at the top of the SERPs this month, next month, your topic of choice could be irrelevant.
The key to driving engagement to your top posts all year round is to keep track of how they are performing and know when to refresh them for more interaction.
With this in mind, stick with us as we teach you how to spot top content decay and reverse it to retain your position as the top dog in a search result.
What is Content Decline?
Content decay is part of your website content’s natural life cycle. Even your top articles will one day become irrelevant if they remain exactly the same.
Once the information you put out there no longer matches your demographic’s search intent, you are left with content that fails to resonate with your target audience.
This leads to a drop in content engagement and less time spent on the page. This then results in a lower ranking of your site content as external competition produces a topical piece that directly targets fresh search trends.
As you can see here, your content’s natural life cycle begins with an initial surge in engagement and growth for your website domain within a search result. This is when you’re likely to see a boost in online sales as an ecommerce brand or an increase in sign-ups for your subscription.
This is then followed by an eventual plateau. The excitement is wearing off, and maybe your topic has become old news.
After this comes the decline phase. While this blog entry might have retained the top spot in SERPs for a while, eventually, a fresher topic and an article with new insights will replace your post, and your engagement will continue to fall.
Optimize your content effortlessly with StoryChief’s free Content Audit. Instantly boost SEO, readability, and engagement with our automated tool—start seeing results today!
Can Your Top Content Still Decline?
Even top content can experience engagement decline due to:
- Shift in search intent: Trends change, affecting what users search for. To stay relevant, focus on creating evergreen content that remains valuable over time.
- Google algorithm updates: Regular updates mean your content must adapt to new ranking criteria. Originality is key to maintaining SEO rankings.
- Keyword competition: Avoid content cannibalization by not targeting the same keywords across multiple pieces, which can dilute rankings.
- Seasonal search volumes: Content tied to seasonal keywords will naturally see fluctuations in engagement throughout the year.
Decline isn't inevitable. By identifying issues early, you can refresh and align your content with current search trends, keeping it at the top of SERPs.
How To Identify Content Decline
Luckily, there are plenty of ways to measure content decline ahead of an engagement disaster.
From clever engagement tracking tools to staying ahead of the search curve, here are just a few ways you can spot the decline of your top content before it is too late.
Google Search Console
Mapping your content engagement trends is a great way to monitor how your content is performing in a live search landscape.
Using a tool like Google Search Console, you can monitor impressions, track your content click-through rate and even take a look at your average position for keywords you’re trying to rank for.
The process is simple:
1. Open up your Google Search Console.
2. Click on the Performance tab.
3. Choose a period.
4. Click your “average CTR” and your “average position”.
5. Filter the “Queries” results list based on your preferences.
6. Map the queries that rank from 4th to 14th in the search position
7. Select your desired keywords for these specific positions and click “Pages,” which will identify the articles that need a refresh.
Alongside Google Search Console, you can also use Google Analytics, which allows you to see how your article engagement peaks and dips in different time periods.
StoryChief’s Content Audit
StoryChief is an all-in-one platform for content management and publishing, which has a dedicated Content Audit Tool. Unlike most content audit tools, it lets you publish content to multiple channels, including blogs and social media. It also provides SEO scores and performance data across these channels.
StoryChief’s proactive Content Audit keeps you ahead by discovering high-impact opportunities in real-time. The always-on system uncovers quick wins that boost traffic, rankings, and conversions—all from within the same app, where you can edit and publish instantly.
StoryChief’s Content Audit suggests 6 types of opportunities:
- New content ideas
- Page losing traffic
- Underperforming CTR
- Content gap
- Content expansion
- New content pillar
Use it to:
- Pro-actively discover traffic decline and competitors outpacing you.
- Track how well your content performs across different platforms
- Improve SEO and readability with in-built suggestions
- Audit multichannel content for reach and engagement
Want to see how StoryChief can work for your company? Access free SEO audits tailored to your data.
Low ‘Average Time on Page’
Another indicator of content decline is a low ‘average time on page’. If your readers are clicking off your content after reading the first few paragraphs, this suggests that it no longer offers them the solution they are searching for.
In Google Analytics, you can track your ‘Unique Page Views’, which will paint a better picture of which pages see engagement on site and for how long.
Anything less than a minute on the page suggests that your ‘average time on page’ metric is low.
External Competition
Are your competitors receiving more engagement than you? If your top-ranking content starts to be overtaken by competitor content, this suggests that you’re seeing decay.
While many competitors battle it out to rank for the same keywords, your position at the top often means that you have the most work on your hands to fight off external pressures.
Some of the main external factors that could affect your ranking position are your competitor’s meta-tags, search intent relevancy, the quality of their backlinks, and brand authority.
If a big player in your industry offers a new angle on a keyword/topic for which you rank at the top, it’s important to scout this out early so you have time to update your content accordingly.
Optimize your content effortlessly with StoryChief’s free Content Audit. Instantly boost SEO, readability, and engagement with our automated tool—start seeing results today!
How To Reverse Top Content Decline
Now that we have covered how to spot top content decline let’s learn how to reverse it.
Your top content rose to first place in the ranks for a reason, so with the right strategies to hand, it should be easy to maintain the position.
Update Your Content
This is the most straightforward fix for declining content engagement simply because it gives your targets something fresh to feast their eyes on.
The key to updating top-level content is to keep those changes small but powerful. If your content topic is still trending, try tweaking some minor details such as stats, links, and images.
If search trends are evolving, ensure that your content evolves with it. This could mean switching up your article angle, introducing new searchable keywords to your meta tags, and adding any new talking points that could secure more engagement for you.
Expand Your Content
Google’s newest algorithm update prefers long-form articles. If your current word count is below 1,000 words on your top-performing blog post, it could be time to expand your piece if you want Google to rank it as a helpful source.
This could simply involve adding a few more paragraphs or going further in-depth on your chosen topic.
Here’s why we’d advise you to bulk out your articles with evergreen content. Not only is this less likely to be affected by search trends, but evergreen content often answers the most popular search phrases in your industry.
If your top-level content in one niche also answers some of the most frequently asked questions from your demographic, you increase your chance of ranking in multiple places.
Rectify Any User Experience Issues
While your top blog post may have ranked well five years ago, UX demands are always on the rise.
Today, consumers expect a page to load in less than three seconds and operate seamlessly on a number of devices.
If your article is slow loading, republish smaller versions of your images and infographics, making it easier for Google to crawl your written content.
Also, ensure that your content is easy to navigate from all angles. Make sure that your content can be accessed in multiple languages with just a click of a button if you’re serving your content to visitors around the world.
Prioritizing an enjoyable experience for all content consumers is the key to keeping your ‘average time on page’ metric high and your SEO stable.
Re-Promote Your Content
If you’ve written a powerful piece of content, the initial promotion stage usually plays a key role in driving site traffic.
Whether you initially shared your article via social media or included a link to the piece in a newsletter, each wave of promotion likely brought you a new stream of viewers, accelerating your content to the top of SERPs.
If you’ve noticed your top content decaying, an easy remedy comes in the form of re-promotion.
If you've recently updated your content, you have a brilliant opportunity to promote the piece once again. Re-share your article on socials and add a great CTA at the end so followers can check out the latest stats, talking points, and trends.
If you shape yourself as an opinion leader in your field, your audience will be interested in engaging with any new insights you release.
Rehaul Your Content Team
Sometimes, it’s the content team that needs a restart. What used to work, might not work all the time.
Although it may be a hard step to take, sometimes it’s necessary to refresh your content writing team.
First, it might be worth hiring a few people on a freelance basis. Then, once you test out a few, it might be worth hiring them permanently, even though they might be remote.
In this day and age, you can hire a talented team effortlessly - wherever in the world they might be - saving you time and money.
Improve Your Internal Link Building
Last but not least, let’s talk about internal link-building. Your SEO articles are likely to contain links to other articles on your page, especially if you’re talking about your top-performing post.
If you’re seeing other pieces of content on your blog drive even more engagement, why not insert a link to the blog post at the top of the umbrella as a reference source?
As you create new articles on fleeting search trends and in-trend topics, adding another avenue to a top evergreen guide, for example, keeps your CTR flowing even years after the piece was published.
Wrapping Up: Spot Content Decline Before it’s Too Late
Driving traffic to your website content is a tricky task. No content can remain relevant forever, so finding the balance between uploading new content and refreshing your top engagement-driving articles is essential.
Using our guide on how to spot and reverse content decay, you’ll be better equipped when it comes to refreshing your own content strategy.
As search intent evolves, so should your content. While you may have written an article that once ranked #1, maintaining that position requires hard work, especially in an ever-growing competitive landscape.
Optimize your content effortlessly with StoryChief’s free Content Audit. Instantly boost SEO, readability, and engagement with our automated tool—start seeing results today!
