It’s rare you’ll find a web page from years ago in the top position for a high-performing keyword - and that’s because content decay simply isn’t prioritised. But what exactly is content decay, what causes it, and how can you prevent it? We explain it all right here.
What is content decay?
Content decay is what it suggests - the decline in the ‘condition’ of a piece of content, be it a page or a blog post, that happens over time; this is in terms of relevance, visibility, and effectiveness. It’s when the content gets old, less useful, or overtaken by more informative content.
The lifecycle of content
To fully understand how decay can impact content, it’s best to see it as part of the lifecycle of a piece of content. Once published, this is what happens to content:
Traction
Once it’s live on your site, it will take a short while for it to rank on Google, and begin to generate some organic traffic; this is your content gaining traction.
The traction part of this process involves your content being crawled and indexed by Google; Google needs to gain an understanding of how your content fits into user search intent, and how relevant it is to the topic. If you’re promoting your content elsewhere following its publication, you may see some initial traffic spikes within your analytics as users find it that way. Its ultimate success and performance, however, relies on its optimisation so that it can be found organically.
Growth
As your content is discovered and referenced in other, reputable areas of the internet (known as backlinks), as well as hopefully ranking higher, your content should enjoy some steady growth in terms of the organic traffic it attracts.
How long this period lasts, we can’t say; it depends on the topic, and the demand there is for it.
Peak
Put simply, this is as much success as your content is going to enjoy. This can be due to backlinks petering out, reaching top SERP positions and therefore ‘maxing out’ the number of searches it can appear for per month, or a new piece of relevant content has been released elsewhere that provides more value.
Decay
As the content turns somewhat stale, it becomes less competitive in the SERPs, being pipped to the post in many instances by newer, fresher content, with information that’s more up to date. This too, of course, will go through the same lifecycle, which is why it’s so important for everyone to keep on top of content decay.
What causes content decay?
We’ve briefly mentioned a few reasons why content decay occurs - here’s a look at the full list in more detail:
Google algorithm updates
To provide their users with fast access to the information they need, and to reflect the ways those needs change, Google constantly adjusts its algorithm. There are small tweaks made regularly, but there are also large, announced changes, known as Core Updates, that bring in a raft of alterations to the way Google discovers, understands, and, ultimately, ranks content. Your older content may no longer be what the algorithm prioritises, and therefore its performance can drop pretty much overnight.
New SERP features
Your content may be performing well for a certain keyword, but Google may then decide to put a featured snippet from someone else's content on the SERPs for that keyword, affecting the visibility of your content.
A change in search intent
If blogs begin to perform better for a certain keyword than a web page, or vice versa, your content may begin to decay as a result, as Google begins to prioritise the alternative page type to keep in touch with the search intent of its users.
Decrease in overall demand
Your content may have been relevant to a certain trend at one point, but users have now moved on; this decrease in overall demand for your content causes its performance in terms of traffic to decline, even if rankings for key terms remain good.
Topic changes
If you’ve referenced statistics events, or anything else that may date your content, you should expect it to decay at some point unless it is updated. Older content simply becomes less relevant, for example when statistics get replaced by the latest numbers, legislation gets rewritten, events come and go, and society and technology changes.
Technical issues
Technical issues can seriously affect your site’s performance, so it makes sense that they can cause content decay too. We’re talking about anything from accidental no-index tags, to slow loading speeds, mobile unfriendliness, and poorly implemented redirects.
Age
Google knows when your content is old and hasn’t been updated, so it will simply prioritise relevant content that is fresher. You don’t generally get served blog posts that are 5 years old when you search for something, do you?
Competition
If a competitor writes more relevant up-to-date content that’s well optimised, it’s likely to trump yours on the SERPs; keep your content competitive to keep up with them.
How to spot signs of content decay
Use GA4 to compare traffic
Ideally, you should live within your analytics to keep your content from suffering the dreaded decay; comparing your traffic month on month and year on year is an excellent way to do this. You want to be looking at pageviews, session times, and conversions. If you notice that over a period of around 3 months the performance of a page is beginning to decline in these areas, it’s time to start reviewing your content.
Use GSC to check impressions, clicks and average position
Google Search Console can give you a clearer view of how your pages are performing in the SERPs specifically, so head here to see whether there have been sustained declines in impressions, clicks, and average position. Again, significant or steady drops should be investigated - content decay may well be the diagnosis.
Audit your top pages of a regular basis
Prevention is better than cure, so don’t wait for your analytics to paint a bleak picture before you take action; make a point of regularly reviewing your top performing pages to ensure they don’t fall foul of content decay. Update and refresh the content as necessary, for both the sake of your rankings, and the experience of your user.
Content decay isn't always bad
This may be pretty frown-inducing considering all we’ve just said, but hear us out; in some instances, old content should stay. For example, blogs around events that have now been and gone are not to be binned; these provide historical accuracy and context, something that still provides value to users.
Does content decay impact SEO?
Yes, it can certainly contribute to a page’s decline in the search results. The relevance of content plays a huge part in rankings, and so it tracks that content that’s older becomes less relevant and therefore less likely to keep those top spots.
How to fix content decay
If you find that the performance of your content is declining and you suspect content decay to be a contributing factor, explore the deployment of the following tactics:
Refresh and improve your content
It’s no secret that Google prioritises helpful content that provides the user with value - you need to improve your content to the point where it ticks those boxes. Take your existing content and update it to answer your user’s questions and solve their problems by using your experience and expertise to gain their trust, and bolster your brand’s authority. These are the E-E-A-T values you’d do well to bear in mind when creating any piece of content.
Expand your content
Is there any extra depth and context you can add to your content? We bet there is. Take some time to do a little more research about your topics and the relevant keywords around it in order to input additional paragraphs that will help provide value to your user, and hopefully improve your rankings.
Optimise for search intent
Take a look at the results pages for your target keywords and analyse the pages that rank highly; are they pages, blog posts, video results - this can tell you a lot about the kind of content a user is looking for when they input certain key terms. You can match this search intent by adapting your content to fit the format that performs well.
Improve internal links
If you have pages on your site that are relevant to a piece of decaying content, internal links from the decaying content to that page can give it a much-needed boost.
Consolidate your articles
Not every piece of content needs to standalone; drawing smaller bits of content into one, larger piece that encompasses a few different aspects of one topic can revive your content, ensuring that your correctly implement
How to prevent content decay
We talked earlier about preventing content decay through audits; here’s how to approach the prevention of content decay in terms of your entire site:
Create a content 'refresh' process
Establish something of a timetable to ensure that all content on your site gets reviewed regularly, based on the traffic it does and can attract. This could be a review once a month, once a quarter, or once a year. Review the relevance, expansion potential, and internal links.
Utilise multiple traffic sources
If you rely simply on the SERPs for your traffic, content decay will have a bigger impact on your pages performance. However, if you’ve built an email list and/or a successful social media following, you can still generate traffic from other sources while you address the content decay.
Monitor and report regularly
You don’t know what you don’t know, so if you aren’t keeping an eye on your analytics, content decay may be happening in your blind spot, and causing problems that could be easily fixed. Keep on top of monitoring page performance to catch content decay early.
Need help with your content?
Keeping on top of your content can be a full time job - and we imagine you already have one of those! The 427 on-page SEO team works together with our content writers to regularly refresh older content and write refresh pieces that keep the page with the changing needs of our client’s users. This is something we could do for you too; just get in touch with us to find out more.