kamran sharief Have you ever written a blog post and then wondered why there was no traffic going to it? You aren’t alone. Underperforming content is an issue that website owners everywhere constantly have to deal with. Here are a few tips on how to detect it and what you can do to make improvements.
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What is Underperforming Content?
Underperforming Blog content simply means a blog post, page, or video that is not doing as well as it could be. For some websites, this can mean zero traffic, and for others, it can just be a significant drop in unique visits.
Often, this type of issue is due to something simple that you can easily fix. In fact, there are numerous reasons why this might be happening, and it could even occur weeks or months after the same post went viral.
While underperforming content isn’t a big problem in the short term, there are things you can do to make it improve. In turn, this could lead to greater organic traffic, more leads, and increased sales or scheduled appointments.
As a business, fixing an underperforming content problem is a great opportunity to spur growth using what you already have on your website.
How to Spot Underperforming Content
Determining which pieces of content on your website fall into the underperforming category isn’t too difficult, but it is the first concrete step in fixing the issue.
First, you’ll want to make sure you’re actually tracking your website stats in Google Analytics. If this isn’t something you’re already doing as part of your digital marketing strategy, you must get started right away. Confused about how to do this? Consider getting in touch with a local digital marketing agency or search optimization expert.
Next, you’ll need to see what pieces of content are getting the lowest amount of traffic. You can do this by viewing actual web traffic reports in Google Analytics or viewing your Google Web Console search stats. If a specific page is getting very few visits from organic traffic, this will be the main indicator that it truly is underperforming content.
Also Read: What Are Bespoke SEO Services and Why Should Businesses Use Them?
Improving Underperforming Content
Once you’ve determined which posts, articles, or videos are acting as underperforming content, it is time to work to improve them. The main culprits of the issue generally are that your content doesn’t match user intent, it’s out of date, or heavily seasonal, or your page has lost visibility following Google search engine results page (SERP) changes.
The good news? Most of this is easily fixable with a little bit of effort. A few examples of ways to do this are:
- Perform New Keyword Research: If your post isn’t ranking for the right keywords, try doing more research and then add these terms to the content itself.
- Add Additional Content: Having a copywriter expand your post by a few hundred or thousand words can help improve Google’s user intent signals.
- Make the Content Less Seasonal: Of course, certain seasonal content just makes sense to go dormant at certain times of the year. In this case, you have the option of editing it to make it more evergreen or just leaving it up to wait for the right time of year to come around.
- Updated to Current Google SEO Best Practices: This one might take a little bit of research, but if you’ve seen a dramatic drop in visibility due to algorithm changes, it would be a good idea to implement best local SEO services to re-optimize the content on your site.
Should You Delete Content?
Many website owners want to know if they should delete content once they realize that it is underperforming. The truth is that it really depends on the actual piece and what else you have on your website that is getting traffic.
If you have two similar posts, you might consider merging them and creating a 504 redirect for the non-performing page. This will allow you to increase the content for one while eliminating any possible duplicate content issues. Just make sure you don’t delete the page outright without doing that redirect, which can cause harm to your page’s overall ranking.
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Wrap Up: Dealing with Underperforming Content
The truth? Dealing with underperforming content is both normal and routine. Every website has certain pages that are more popular than others, but taking the time to identify and fix the issue is a good way to stay ahead of the curve. After all, you never know if that one blog post you spent extra time revising is going to be the next big organic traffic booster for your entire website.
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