It occurred to me that when a site has it’s on-page search engine optimisation carried out there is often very little obvious evidence that anything has changed. When a site is refreshed, or content updated it is clear to everyone that something is different. And that is where the search engines share our point of view- to a certain extent anyway.
I’m still slightly surprised at just how effective a content refresh can be for rankings. Obviously it is just one technique but the power that it has on its own can be startling. If you have a site that hasn’t had the main pages revamped in many months you should consider these points.
Take a fresh look at your content, or get a dispassionate third party to review it- what does it say about you, is it compelling, how does it make the reader feel? If the responses are “huh, whatever” to any of these the page is ripe for a rewrite.
When revamping content there is no need to go mad and turn it into a major project, it can be done incrementally- in many cases it is better handled this way- a page at a time.
Also you should keep some of the old content intact- in case the engines get spooked by so much freshness that your rankings take a temporary dip. If you’ve got 400 words to play with maybe just rewrite 300 of them.
In terms of the words you use don’t look at list of keywords and try to cram them all in, repeatedly. Instead write as you would do for people. Search engines are important and like to see relevance and and coherency in your content, but you still need to make it a worthwhile read. You could introduce text links judiciously to your content but do this with caution (and research) as it can upset or in extreme cases counteract any benefit from refreshed content.
In short, if you give your site some regular tuning it can have smashing results.
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