If you have a website with several years of blog posts, look at your analytics to see which pages get the most traffic from search engines. You may notice some older posts get more traffic than new posts. Review the old posts and see if they still contain up-to-date information or if they would benefit from a content refresh. By doing this, you can build on your existing traffic and provide valuable information to your potential customers.
Fresh content has been preferred by Google since 2011 . Read the Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines for details.
While updating content sounds simple enough to accomplish, it can be a time-consuming task if you personally rewrite the content. It might take too long to research and update content. However, you can now use generative artificial intelligence or AI to help you update content.
The number of options available for AI content generation is overwhelming. There are many services such as Copy, Article Forge or Jasper available to help you use AI to update your old content. You can sign up for free trials with some of them to see what they can do.
Take your old blog post content and add a prompt for the AI to understand what you want it to do and then check the results.
A Sample AI Prompt for Content Refresh
“Revise the given content to improve its clarity, conciseness, and overall quality.
Instructions:
- Read the original content carefully to understand its message and purpose.
- Identify any areas that need improvement, such as grammar, word choice, or sentence structure.
- Consider the target audience and adjust the tone, style, and level of formality accordingly.
- Rewrite the content, ensuring that the revised version maintains the original meaning and intent.
- Use clear and concise language, avoiding unnecessary jargon or complex terms.
- Break down lengthy sentences into shorter, more digestible ones.
- Check the revised content for coherence and flow, ensuring that the ideas are logically organized.
- Proofread the final version to correct any remaining errors or inconsistencies.
Original content: Paste content here”
Check & Edit the Generated Content
Once the content generates, check it and see if it sounds good or needs adjusting. You can add a new prompt or select rewrite to improve and adjust the content. Make any edits you want and then you can test the new content. Be sure to compare it to the old content and make a human judgment call if the new content is actually better and more up-to-date than the old content.
Publish the Updated Content & Check Analytics
Make a copy of your old content and then replace it with the new content, optimize it for search and publish. Update your publish date as well. If your blog posts show the date in the URL, remember to add a redirect from the old date to the new date so you won’t have a broken link appear for links to that content.
Remember to check your analytics after a time to see if traffic improves or decreases to your targeted keyphrases. Did you get any more leads from the new AI-improved content?
Resources for AI Content Marketing
If you’re just beginning to use AI for content marketing, check the resources below for AI content generation from text to images to podcasts. Learn more about AI including the ethics of AI and where it shouldn’t be used:
- Do’s and Don’ts: Look at this post to see what do’s and don’ts you should adhere to when using AI to generate and update content
- Learn more with this Free Course on Generative AI from Shelly Palmer
- See a list of the most visited AI sites or visit this AI tools directory showing the most popular AI websites sorted by monthly traffic from high to low https://futurepedia.io
- AI content generation for graphics – MidJourney, Dall-E 2
- Wondercraft – turns blog posts into podcasts!
