Content can take many forms (or arguably any form!), but I’m sure we’d all agree that it still follows a sort of etiquette. For example, blogs typically get updated with newer, fresher content, sorted chronologically, with each post/article having its own dedicated URL; some posts will be evergreen and applicable for future readers, while some will be topical and applicable there-and-then (but may still be useful to refer to at a later date); and so on.
Generally speaking and for the most part, updating an old article or piece of content with new information may not make sense – a new post or perhaps a ‘Part 2’ as part of a series may be more appropriate with the etiquette that most people are used to. However, ultimately it depends on the content: the type of content, the nature of the content and what’s best for the content in question.
There may be better terminology for it (suggestions in the Comments please!), but for the sake of argument I’ll call it continually updated content, which is a single piece of content with a fixed page/URL that changes and evolves after its initial publication, whether on a frequent or infrequent basis. Here are a few examples:
- Link Building Strategies – The Complete List by Jon Cooper (Point Blank SEO) – For those of you who are unfamiliar with this epic post, Jon has compiled “the most comprehensive list of link building strategies on the Web.” It’s big. Additionally, as link building strategies evolve, the post will be updated accordingly. It encourages people to refer to it and return to it on an on-going basis – not only that, but Jon encourages people to contribute additional strategies, if they think that he might’ve missed something.
- SEOmoz’s very own Google Algorithm Change History – Similarly, SEOmoz have compiled a list of all the major Google algorithm tweaks and updates, past and present. When a new one comes along, it gets added to the top of the list, gradually growing in size as the years (and changes/updates) roll by. Dr. Pete talks about it in more detail as part of his recent Big Content post.
The beauty of this type of content is that you can legitimately push the outreach further than other pieces of content: with one of the updates to his Link Building Strategies post, Jon tweeted about it; when SEOmoz add new algorithm change updates, they tweet about it. This does two things:
- It encourages people who are familiar with the content to check out the latest version, to see what’s new – it reminds them of its existence,
- For those who have never come across the content before (maybe they missed it when it was first published), it introduces them to it.
If you were to push a regular piece of content that much and that often, you’d risk losing followers or getting reported as spam, but if you have a piece of content that you update now and again, you can push it further – it extends the outreach indefinitely (or as much as the content is updated).
I recently created a piece of content that fits into this category. While I’m sure that Jon’s and SEOmoz’s examples would probably generate many more insights (as they operate on a much larger scale and would each generate higher volumes of traffic), I still wanted to share with you my experiences and observations with my blog post, from the outreach side of things: earning links, social shares, rankings and – ultimately – traffic.
A Continually Updated Content Case Study
At the end of August, I published a blog post titled Awesome Web & Tech Events in Cardiff – September 2012 on my blog, SEOno. As it says in the introduction to the post, it came about after realising that Cardiff had a lot of web/tech events and conferences taking place in September, and I knew that compiling a list of them in one place would be useful for South Wales-based people who have an interest in the web/tech sector.
When the post was first published, it contained six event listings, but as the month went on, I added three more events that I’d either missed out originally or announced post-publication. In addition to the original outreach, with each update I informed my Twitter followers. The outreach was extended – I was legitimately able to tweet about a post on 18th September (which first went live weeks earlier) because it was still relevant and useful to people.
From 25th August until 30th September, the post received 195 pageviews, 173 (nearly 90%) of which were unique:
As you can see above, the outreach in this example can be separated into six sections: three early on (to coincide with the initial publication) and three later on (to coincide with the updates). Here’s how I went about it…
Outreach Phase 1 – 25th Aug: The Big Push
I shared the post on the big four: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
On Twitter, in addition to doing a standalone tweet…
…I also notified each individual event via @mention, to let them know about it:
To make it less cheeky (less hey-check-this-out-guys!), in most cases I asked them to confirm if the logo usage was ok and if the details were correct, or if they could provide me with more information and/or a logo, which I think legitimises the approach a bit more. All of them were happy to be included and most of them RTed it as well, which was awesome.
I also took the opportunity to @mention other local event organisers I knew about, asking if they had an event planned in September but hadn’t announced it just yet. At the very least, I was making them aware of the post and offering to help them out – building the relationship.
In hindsight, I should’ve perhaps spread this out over the course of a couple of hours or days, as I realised afterwards that if anyone who was following me was also following some of the other events, their Home Feed would’ve been hit pretty hard. I didn’t get anyone complaining to me or anything, but I could’ve annoyed (and potentially lost) a follower or two in doing so.
On Facebook, in addition to sharing it on my personal profile’s Wall, I also shared it with CardiffStart‘s FB Group and its 200+ members. I wouldn’t have done this usually (with other SEOno posts), but from an outreach perspective, it’s an ideal audience, given the post’s content.
Then lastly, I threw it on my personal LinkedIn and Google+ profiles for good measure.
With this big initial push, the post obtained a fair few visits and pageviews (65, 33% of all pageviews across the date range), but as the above Google Analytics graph shows, it still obtained pageviews throughout the remainder of August and across September.
Outreach Phases 2 & 3 – 28th & 31st Aug: The Reminders
For any new SEOno post, I usually do one reminder/follow-up tweet a few days later. If I’m particularly proud of a post, I’ll be a little cheeky and do two, spread out across a few days. In this case I felt that it was more justifiable because I’d published the post on a Saturday, so I took the “Over the weekend…” approach and tweeted it on Monday:
A few more days later, I did an “In case you missed it…” style tweet, which is something I usually do with all my posts, just in case people missed the first tweet:
Referring back to the GA graph, you can see that the two biggest peaks in traffic were around this time, coinciding with the initial push (on the first day of publication) and one of the reminders. But there were also a few slight jumps in traffic over the rest of the month, coinciding with the updates.
Outreach Phases 4, 5 & 6 – 8-18th Sept: The Updates
As mentioned earlier, I was able to justify additional outreach with additional tweets, each time the post was updated. These gained RTs as well:
Link Acquisition
At present, I can see that there are at least two inbound links pointing to the post, coming from two blogs. What’s interesting to note is their publication dates. While one of them was published in late August (coinciding with its initial publication), the other was published in mid-September (coinciding with the reminders). In this instance, Geoff of halfblog.net was already familiar with the post (he’d actually RTed it previously), but you could argue that one of my later update tweets might have reminded him and inspired him to link to it from his post.
My point is that this type of content can easily encourage links at later dates – well after the initial publication date – in the same vein as RTs and other types of social shares.
Long-term – Traffic from the SERPs
Jon and Dr. Pete would be able to give more insight into what this type of content can do for you in terms of the SERPs. Jon tracked (and has commented upon) his post’s ranking, which currently ranks 1st for “link building strategies”. Meanwhile, the SEOmoz post ranks high for many keywords around “google algorithm history/changes/update” and even ranks on page 1 for just “google algorithm”. Jon’s example is especially interesting as it took him a while to rank for it – it could have been the case that later links were what gave it the final push into the top spot.
While my example does not really apply to the longer term SERPs side of things, as I didn’t really give it a keyword/SEO focus and also because it’s timely content rather than evergreen, it has still received a trickle of traffic from the long-tail, for people searching for Cardiff-based events (both in general and related to web/tech) and even some of the specific events by name. Some examples:
- events in cardiff september 2012
- cardiff tech events
- cardiff events sept 2012
- cardiff blogs maldron september 4th
- cardiff cake mixer
Pro Tips
If you decide to run some continually updated content, here are a few other things to consider:
- Publish it on your own site/blog – Content like this might make for a great guest blogging opportunity, but I’d advise against it. For updating purposes, it makes sense to publish it somewhere where you’ll have 100% control of it when you require it. Unless you have a very good relationship with the guest blog owner and they’re speedy on the updates, your own site/blog is your best bet – the last thing you’d want is for updates to take days before they go live each time, especially if making sure that it’s updated ASAP is crucial. An in-between could be to give it its own dedicated site (à la MozCast), so that you are acquiring external links while still retaining full control over it.
While my example may not knock one’s proverbial socks off given its low pageview and link stats, I wanted to highlight the principle more than anything. This can easily be applied to bigger projects on bigger sites, and – depending on the industry – could be an opportunity that’s there for the taking. While it does align with Dr. Pete’s thinking on Big Content, the content doesn’t necessarily have to be ‘Big’ – a post on local events wasn’t a big undertaking to put together, but it came in handy as a go-to resource for a fair few people.
What are your dealings with continually updated content? Are there any other case studies or success stories out there? I’d love to hear about more examples in the comments section below.
[Welsh Twitter dragon image credit: Foomandoonian]
