7 Techniques To Boost The SEO Of Your Old Pages

You have made considerable efforts to position your web page. But after a few weeks where it has monopolized the best positions, you have noticed with bitterness that your page gradually loses its position and disappears from the first page… Why?

Several factors can explain this. First of all, there are the changes in algorithms that can cause this change. We must also remember that in SEO we are often in competition with competitors, and in some sectors it is fierce! One of your competitors may have committed significant resources to outperform you. Another factor that can also explain this downgrading is the "freshness premium" which means that fresher results (depending on their relevance of course) are better highlighted by Google. But don't panic, here are 7 techniques to boost the positioning of your old pages:

1. Insert new internal links

If you haven't already, add internal links to the page. Find other pages on your website that you can link to the one you want to show up.

In addition to strengthening the PageRank of your page and the internal structure of the site, you generate additional traffic. It's also a great way for Googlebot, Google's crawler, to come for a walk to see new changes and keep them coming back more regularly.

2. Add your page to the main navigation menu

If your page is of particular importance, the best way to improve its visibility and therefore its positioning is to highlight it in the main or secondary menu of your site. The objective is that it is directly accessible via the home page.

A high update frequency also induces a better ranking. It is one of the factors of Google that makes a site like wikipedia.com always rank in good position (among other things it is far from being the only factor).

3. Use unavailable pages

If you have recent pages that return a 404 error, one tip is to redirect some of them to your target page to get additional search traffic that they are still likely to drain. This should be done on a limited number of pages and with care ensuring that they are not linked to spammy pages ...

4. Create new pages that will boost it

A principle of SEO linked to the PageRank mechanism is that the more pages there are on your web suite, the better your overall ranking will be. Some experts advise adding 20 - 30% more pages each year. You know what you have left to do ! The more pages you create, the more your site as a whole will be able to support the page you want to promote.

5. Add content

Where possible, add content to your page . What is important to note is that it is not a question of length but of relevance.

Write a text in order to increase the number of words if there is no more added value, Google will not like! Think about user experience and Google will appreciate it better  🙂

For example, if you didn't do it initially, you can add multimedia content: Slideshare presentations, videos, images, animated gifs, etc.

6. Promote the page on social networks

Writing content is good, making it known is good too! Because content alone does not generate its own traffic, it must be relayed on social networks as soon as it is posted to be better visible.

But nothing prevents you from relaying them ink even several months later, provided of course that it is still relevant. Promoting your page on social media will allow you to attract new traffic, get new shares, and in fact, improve the social signals factor for SEO.

If you are using WordPress, here is a great tool to help you with that task.

7. Create new backlinks

I mentioned above the importance of internal links to boost the SEO of your old pages. External linking is obviously not left out.

In general, pages acquire more links at the start of their uploading, then gradually they acquire fewer and fewer links, if at all. An audit of your links makes it easy to verify it. Getting a quality inbound link is an effective way to make it more visible. 

Conclusion

Apart from some exceptions: government sites or Wikipedia because they are authoritative for Google, most pages are likely to lose their position at one time or another especially if the competition pushes you a little ...

The relevance of a page or a content is always relative to a period, and fortunately moreover because this allows other sites to be more visible if they offer more relevant content.

Without focusing only on the old pages, you need to work strategically to ensure that the ones that are most important to you still rank well through time and survive in Google's volatile SERPs!

If you have other techniques to improve the positioning of your old pages, do not hesitate to comment on them.🙂