Decision-makers hate outdated content. They want to make quick, easy comparisons between vendors. Old, irrelevant or inaccurate information makes their job harder.
They also wonder, "If XYZ Ltd takes as much care of its products and customers as they do their website, what else gets the same low-care treatment?"
Search engines also penalise outdated content. This means you're much less likely to feature in AI answers. That matters because AI visitors are between 4.4x (Semrush) and 23x (Ahrefs) more likely to convert.
Refresh your content now. Breathe life back into your site and position yourself to take advantage of the change in how people search.
Clients are asking us what AI search means for their business, website visibility and content marketing strategy. Here are their four main questions:
Updating your content refresh now will future-proof your site, improve its visibility in AI and search and deliver high-quality closable leads for years to come.
When HubSpot updated its old blog posts, leads doubled and traffic soared by 106% (HubSpot)
Semrush won 64% more non-branded traffic and ranked for more keywords following a major content refresh (CXL)
The 2024 Google Core Update rewarded sites that regularly update their content, leaving sites with stale or outdated content behind (Digital Analyst Team).
For your refresh to work, it needs to bring in the type of customers you want, as close to the point of purchase as possible. To do that, we need to get to know your business. Our approach is guided by four core content principles:
Updating content across your website is a significant investment. We work with your sales and marketing heads to understand the results that you want, like higher-quality leads or content to break into a brand-new marketplace.
If you have an existing brand TOV or buyer persona, we'll work with them. If not, we can help you create new ones. We want to write your content so it sounds peer-to-peer so decision-makers see you as one of them, not just a vendor.
We speak with your sales and service teams to find out valuable information, like the types of objections hold up deals and the product features customers want the most. This helps us create content that mirrors the needs of your audience.
Not every page on your website will need updating. We'll let you know when there's a strong case to fold three or four weak pages into one focused, high-performing asset that ranks higher in search and is easy for AI search tools to scan.
Refreshes are a chance to optimise every page on your site.
A technical check of each page (links, page speed and structure)
A review of your internal linking to build topical authority
Schema markup to give search engines and AI vital context
Content restructuring for better AI readability and citation
A full refresh of all metadata (page titles, descriptions and so on)
AI feeds off SEO, and SEO rewards sites that organise related high-authority content into topic clusters. We look for opportunities to cluster existing content and add further depth to the subjects your buyers search for most.
Give AI search bots what they want. Clear structures, BLUF-style answer-first formatting, Author Schema, precise internal linking, FAQ sections, key takeaways and TL;DRs all increase the chances your content gets cited in AI responses.
AI search works differently. To provide the fullest answer, AI runs "query fan-outs", asking additional questions to provide greater depth. We study AI overviews and conversations to spot the related questions it pulls in and build them into your content.
Our writers can refresh any pages on your site. Our strategists will recommend the pages you should prioritise to deliver the biggest impact on lead generation and sales. These six page types are where we typically deliver the greatest results:
Product description pages persuasive enough to convert high-intent visitors into leads or sales, packed with valuable long-tail SEO keywords and AI snippets. Turn every product page into a search asset.
Service descriptions that focus on outcomes over features and processes, showing how you adapt your approach to meet each client's needs, improve their operations and deliver the results they want.
The pillar of any successful search engine optimisation campaign, articles provide an invaluable opportunity to educate your audience, demonstrate your knowledge and add prospects to your sales pipeline.
Your "About us" page and staff bios are often the last pages buyers look at before they get in touch, because they want reassurance you can deliver. AI also uses credibility content as a major trust signal.
Branded searches (when people search for you by name) lead directly to your home page. Use your home page to immediately tell visitors they've come to the right place and encourage them to explore your site.
A thorough knowledge base is great for SEO ranking, an invaluable "how-to" source for AI-first searches and a welcome resource for prospects who want to explore individual product and service features.
With the new content live on your site, we start tracking its performance. Our aim is to deliver results as fast as possible that don’t just spike but sustain over the long term. Here's how we support you after launch:
You'll be able to see where your updated content is ranking in SEO and how much it's improved since we refreshed it. We'll also make sure you can see how your visibility in AI overviews is rising so you can track your return on the project.
We monitor your main competitors after your refreshed content goes live. If they make significant changes to their sites or a new rival launches, we analyse their strategy and advise you on the best course of action to keep you in the lead.
SEO algorithms change two or three times a year and search engines are still working out exactly how they want AI to work. Part of our job post-refresh is to track each update and advise you on any actions needed to maintain performance and visibility.
Text under H3 header. Text under H3 header. Text under H3 header.
Text under H3 header. Text under H3 header. Text under H3 header.
Refresh your website content with [w.] to boost your search engine rankings and AI visibility. More importantly, give the high-intent visitors AI attracts the fresh, relevant information they need to make a decision.
Book a no-obligation call to discuss your commercial goals and existing content. We'll identify your key priorities.
You'll get a clear proposal outlining the pages to be refreshed, our recommended strategy, and a fixed, transparent quote.
Once approved, our team of strategists and writers gets to work, handling the entire refresh process we've outlined.
We deliver the refreshed content for your final approval. After publishing, we begin tracking its performance and proving its ROI.
Clients, especially clients placing larger, more complex orders, check out your About Us pages and staff bios to check your experience and expertise. Order a rewrite now so visitors quickly see why you're a credible partner and not just another potential supplier.
Show your products and services in action and how they overcome customer pain points. Describe how you found your client, what the problem was, how you solved it and what benefits they're enjoying now. Case studies prove the value you deliver to your client base.
Here's a selection of the types of questions customers ask when they contact us.
A: You should always keep your core pages, especially product and services pages, up-to-date and relevant. For blog posts on timeless topics, so-called evergreen content, you might only need a check-up once a year. Articles that cover fast-moving topics or rely on external data may need more attention. Build a simple editorial calendar to stay organised and avoid letting key pages go out of date.
A: A simple update requires a small change, like correcting outdated information or adding new screenshots to a how-to page if your prodcut has chenged. A full content refresh involves digging deeper by editing existing and adding new content to compete for target keywords across your whole site and addresses technical elements like title tags, alt text, and meta descriptions.
A: Statistics show that refreshing older content makes a real difference with Google and can build your site authority. Creating entirely new content is great, but think of that as supporting existing content or expanding into areas where you want to build future authority.
A: Pages that are already potentially leading to conversions but have seen traffic decline should be your tp priority. Refreshing these 'money pages', like service and product descriptions, where search intent is highest, often provides you with the fastest and most direct return on investment. Make sure you use a tool like SurferSEO for keyword and topic coverage.
A: A good refresh directly boosts your E-E-A-T. By updating facts, citing new sources, and including your team's real-world experiences, you add additional expertise and trustworthiness, which is what Google wants and rewards.
A: Start with data when deciding which pages to refresh first. Analyze data from your Google Analytics and your preferred SEO tool like Ahrefs or Semrush to find pages with declining traffic or keyword rankings. Create a list of priorities based on the importance of each page to lead and revenue generation.
A: We look at what's currently ranking. We analyse the top pages to find common themes that competitors have identified as being of interest to your tareget audience as well as answering complex questions they might miss. This allows us to add additional context and valuable insights that make your content better than the competition.
A: Keep the existing URL, as it has built up authority over time. Changing the URL resets that authority and can be harmful to your SEO. It's hard to think of any circumstances we'd recommend this course of action. Updates happen on the same page with the same URL.
A: Both are important, but structure is more important. AI really has no opinion on what great facts are. It relies on SEO authority and the structure of content on your page when it's answering a question. You should always improve the quality of your content, including adding new facts, to appeal to readers and SEO.
A: Yes, if possible. Having read-only access allows us to get the most accurate picture of your current performance, identify the best opportunities and measure the impact of our work properly after the content refreshes work their magic. We augment that with additional tools for extra insights, too.
A: Success isn't just about getting more traffic. We track a range of metrics, including rankings for new keywords, improved click-through rates from search results, and, most importantly, an increase in more conversions for the page's specific goal, if we can attribute it through your CRM.
A: It can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. Sometimes, Google re-crawls and re-evaluates a single page quickly. For more competitive terms, it can take longer for the improvements to be fully reflected in your search rankings. We'll show you how hard it is to rank for each page we update so you get an idea of which will climb the results faster.
A: We use specialist tools (external and internal) to monitor the SERPs for your most important keywords. This gives us the data we need to run reports that show you when and how your content is being featured in AI Overviews and other AI features.
A: Nothing is ever risk free but we follow standard SEO and AI practices when updating content on yor site. In other words, we aim to improve on what's there now. The much greater risk to your site come from 'content decay', when your pages become outdated and lose traffic over time.
A: This is market intelligence we use to analyse the changes they've made to: first, compare it to your content and second, analyse their strategy to see if there's anything of value we can incorporate in your campaign. As part of our monthly service, we look for changes in competitor content and drops in your ranks to prioritise further refreshes.
A: For analysis and research, AI tools can be helpful. However, we believe that for the final content creation, you need human expertise to be sure the information in your content is correct (AI hallucinates a lot more than people realise) and that it's written in a way to appeal to your readers. Many SaaS companies refuse to use AI tools for this reason as they see linking topics back to their platforms .as an essential part in connecting education with product relevance, something AI tools often miss.
A: Yes, usually. Refreshing content takes a lot less time and costs less than creating brand new content, even though it is a thorough and in-depth and time consuming process.
A: We charge by the number of pages we're refreshing, not by word count, but we aim to keep that to a minimum to reduce your costs. Often, we'll recommend combining four weaker pages into one stronger page. In this example, we'd charge you for the first page only.
A: A Refresh Project is a one-time engagement to update a batch of existing pages. The Monthly Retainer is an ongoing service where we continuously monitor performance and proactively apply a fresh coat of optimisation to your content as needed.
A: The sources referenced in this article are: