How to Update Old Website Content to Maintain Google Rankings

With frequent Google algorithm changes, simply publishing blog posts is no longer enough. To maintain rankings and meet user expectations, content marketing needs regular support: editing, updating, and keeping it current.

Promodo’s SEO specialists explain how to choose content for updates and what to do to keep it relevant.

Why You Need to Update Old Content

Readers Prefer Fresh Content

If a search engine result includes a post published two, three, or even five years ago next to a newer article, users are more likely to click the newer one — even if it's ranked slightly lower — because they expect it to reflect the latest data or approaches.
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Ranking Algorithm Changes

In recent years, Google has significantly increased the frequency of ranking updates. Previously, changes occurred several times per year, but now there are over 10 updates daily, along with two to three major Core Updates annually.

What worked for SEO three to five years ago is no longer effective in 2025.

If your content doesn’t meet the latest update requirements — especially for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) niches such as healthcare or finance — your pages may lose rankings or even drop out of the index altogether.

To Boost Blog Page Effectiveness

If you only publish new content without touching older pages, your blog’s performance will decline over time. Outdated content drives less traffic and conversions — eventually none at all. Regularly updating blog posts helps maintain steady traffic and preserve rankings.

To Appear in AI Results

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The launch of AI Overviews in Ukraine has transformed how users interact with search content. Before, the goal was to reach the top of the SERP so users would click through to your site. Now, Google often displays answers directly in AI Overview blocks at the top of the results.

These answers are generated based on the most up-to-date and reliable sources. Updating content to align with AI recommendations increases your chances of being featured in AI Overviews, as well as in tools like ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity, Claude.ai, and others. This opens up new traffic channels and conversion opportunities.

What Is Considered Outdated Content

Outdated content includes any information that is no longer accurate or relevant. This may involve:

• Outdated data or statistics
  
• Factual errors
  
• Irrelevant keywords that are no longer used

Even text with outdated design, style, or references to the old site name — for example, after rebranding or moving the site to a new domain.

Such content may have a high bounce rate, as search engines rate it lower, which negatively affects the site's position in search results.

How to Choose Which Articles to Update

It seems logical to update articles that don't generate any traffic at all. But this is not the best approach if we want to get results. If a page is not ranked at all, it means that Google no longer likes it — and even after updating it, it may be difficult to promote. So it's better to start with content that already has at least minimal traffic or potential for growth.

There are various ways to find pages that have lost traffic. Here are a few of them — they provide the most accurate data and are easy to use.

Google Search Console

This is the number one tool you need to use to attract organic traffic.

To sort pages in descending order, do the following:

1. Go to the “Search results” section.
2. At the top, set the comparison period, for example:
3. Current 6 months compared to the previous period (i.e., 6 months)
4. Then click “Compare” in the date settings.
5. Click on the “Pages” tab.
6. Double-click on “Clicks” to sort by descending traffic for this period.

Google Analytics 

Similar to Google Search Console, Google Analytics allows you to track pages that are losing visitors per month. The advantage of Analytics is that you can see a decrease in traffic not only from search, but also from other channels, such as direct, referral traffic, or paid advertising.

Open GA4 → Reports → Engagement → Pages and screens. You will see a report for the current month with the most effective pages

1. Set the date range, for example, the last 6 months.
2. Click on the “Compare” button and select the period for comparison (for example, the previous 6 months).
3. A column with the percentage increase or decrease in traffic will appear in the table.
4. Sort the pages in descending or ascending order to see which ones have lost the most traffic.
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However, in addition to traffic dynamics and keywords, it is also worth analyzing whether the number of conversions on the site or clicks on links has decreased. All this information will help you create and update outdated content, making it not only relevant but also effective.

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If you work with several websites at the same time, you can create a single report — in one place, you can display pages where traffic has decreased and even visually compare periods in the form of tables, graphs, or change dynamics. For example, you can configure the display to show only those pages where the percentage of traffic decline is more than 20–30% or more. 

Google Trends

Important! Traffic may decrease due to seasonality. You can check whether this article has seasonal keywords in Google Trends. If it is not the season now and traffic has decreased, but the positions remain unchanged, you should not touch such an article — it is better to start working on it just before the season:

• update statistics
• add trusted sources
• update images if they are of poor quality or not very good
• add interactive elements (templates, calendars, checklists, downloads, online calculators, surveys, etc.)
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Ahrefs

Another tool is Site Explorer in Ahrefs. Enter your website domain or blog URL, go to the Top pages and Compare pages sections. Select the period for comparison, for example, the last 6 months versus the previous 6 months. 

In the table, we pay attention to columns with negative traffic dynamics. We are interested in pages with the highest percentage of traffic decline. At the same time, it is worth checking whether there have been any significant changes in the content, structure, or external factors on these pages. Perhaps the article was recently updated but has not yet begun to rank.

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Services for Position Monitoring

Any ranking tracking service — Seranking, SpySerp, Allposition, Serpstat, or your own custom solution — allows you to view how keyword rankings have changed over a certain period. It is best to analyze the dynamics over a period of 3, 6, 9, or 12 months.
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What Updates Can Be Made

Minor Updates

Perhaps the article belongs to the Evergreen topic, and the information in the text is essentially relevant, but it was probably not very well optimized. Adding missing keywords or LSI, a question block can significantly improve the situation and update the metadata.

Before optimization, this article generated no more than a few clicks per month, but after refinement, it rose to the top for key queries and began generating 500–1,000 clicks per month.

Full Content Revamp

A thorough article update is necessary for materials that have not only lost their position and traffic, but also have the following characteristics:

• contain a lot of outdated or inaccurate information;
• do not cover the topic well — important sections are missing;
• have an outdated structure, tone, or approach;
• do not meet current SEO requirements;

What is included in a complete update:

1. Analysis of key queries

• Open the article's URL in Search Console and see which queries it received the most clicks for over a long period of time — for example, over a year or 16 months. Focus on these keywords.
• We check the frequency of key queries in Serpstat, Google Keyword Planner, or other tools — this will help determine which queries to focus on. When optimizing outdated content, there is no need to collect all the keywords again — just focus on the most frequent and relevant ones. To avoid missing potentially valuable queries, use the “Similar phrases” tool in Serpstat — it will help you find new promising keywords.
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• What positions already exist for these keywords? Does the query match the search intent? We check this in incognito mode by entering the target query. For example, a query that appears commercial at first glance may have informational intent, in which case a blog article will rank better. In this case, we optimize it. If commercial pages are at the top, the query is not suitable for a blog.

‍2. Article structure, metadata, and micro-markup

• Check whether the article structure is consistent and logical, whether it includes keywords, and whether it has correctly distributed h1-h4 markup.
• Update the metadata using high-frequency keywords and keywords that will help convey what the article is about, while following Google's recommendations.

3. Competitor research

• Analyze the articles of the top 3 competitors for the target keyword query.
• Compare what you have and what you don't have.
• How is your competitors' content structured, and do they use lists, tables, charts, or any interactive elements?

Identifying what exactly is missing from your article is a rather laborious task that can be delegated to AI, for example.

You need to enter the text of the article and ask it to analyze competitors for this article and provide recommendations. This is the easiest way, without complicated prompts.

The better the requirements for analyzing articles are formulated, the better the analysis of the article will be. 

Tools such as Semrash and Ahrefs are good at highlighting missed headlines or information. They will also suggest competitors for the target query and provide an assessment of the content for each block. They will describe in detail what exactly needs to be improved.
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4. Updating internal links and links to external resources

• Check existing links to ensure they are relevant and do not return a 404 error.
• Articles should be linked to materials that are semantically related to each other.

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• As for external links, only link to trusted resources such as bbc.com, reuters.com, nyt.com, moz.com, semrush.com, hubspot.com, etc.

5. Create a work brief for the copywriter

After analyzing and identifying inaccuracies, the article should be sent for rewriting. It is important to give the copywriter clear recommendations: which keywords to use, where to place them, and how best to develop the topic while preserving semantic connections. You can copy the text into Google Docs and make edits with comments — what to replace and where. 
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What to Do After Updating the Content

1. After receiving the updated text from the copywriter, check that they have fulfilled all the requirements and distributed the important keywords throughout the text. Go through each point of the technical assignment to make sure that nothing has been missed.
2. Update old images, graphics, or videos in the article to improve its visual appeal and relevance to current topics.
3. Repost the article at the same URL, but update the publication date.
4. After publication, submit the page for reindexing via Google Search Console.
5. Additionally, place links to the updated article in other relevant materials on the blog site.
6. Distribute the content on social media to attract additional traffic.

Additional Tips

• If content does not generate traffic or conversions from an SEO perspective, or does not meet target queries or business priorities, it is better to delete such content.
• If you are launching a website from scratch, then, of course, there is nothing to update yet. But it is important to include this in your annual strategy — so that you can regularly return to the materials in the future and keep them up to date.
• When developing a content strategy for your website or blog, you need to analyze the seasonality of queries so that you don't waste time writing articles that repeat themselves year after year.
• Don't add the year to article URLs. This complicates content updates and can lower the page's position in search engines, as you will have to create new URLs every year. If you already have two similar articles on the same topic but with content from different years, it is worth redirecting from the article that ranked lower to the one that brings more traffic and has a better position. This will help avoid content cannibalization and improve SEO.

Content Update Checklist

☐ identify pages with traffic decline (GSC, GA4, Ahrefs)

☐ analyze the seasonality of queries (Google Trends)

☐ check if the page has potential (traffic, positions, keywords)

☐ add missing keywords/LSI

☐ update metadata, images, interlinking

☐ add an FAQ block or other micro-markup

☐ update the date, reindex via GSC

☐ post the updated article on social media 

Conclusion

Updating old content is not a one-time task — it’s a continuous and essential part of SEO strategy. With regular optimization, you can maintain search rankings, extend content life, and steadily grow organic traffic and conversions.
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