We’ve all heard it before: content is king. If you want your business to be competitive, you must have a strong online presence. The most reliable way to build that presence is to create valuable content and ensure it reaches your audience. Most marketers accomplish this through:
- An active company blog
- LinkedIn pages & articles
- Publishing a White Paper
- Creating YouTube videos
- Sharing Instagram pics
It’s tempting to assume that the more of this content on your site, the better. However, we’re going to examine an often overlooked aspect of content marketing: why you should expire your content. Here’s how becoming friends with the “delete” button can aide your SEO and engagement.
So What Do We Mean When We Say Expiring Content?
“Expiring Content” is a catch-all term for any content that has a limited availability. Some of the most common examples include:
- Out of stock inventory
- Seasonal/rotational products
- Discontinued/unavailable services
You’ve probably seen this type of expired content plenty of times while shopping online. Most online businesses, especially clothing retailers, have custom pages designed to redirect users away from products that are currently unavailable.
In digital marketing lingo, expiring content is a more nuanced term. While it still refers to traditionally expired content like deleted blog posts, expiring content is a whole new arena of content strategy that is still being refined by businesses and marketers.
Unlike the previous “expired” products/services, this content is made with a purposeful expiration date by the creator. This may include:
- Company snapchats
- Limited availability articles
- Online seminars
This may seem counterintuitive, but expiring content can actually shoot your engagement through the roof. We’ll get into why that is down below.
Why Shouldn’t I Leave Content On My Site Indefinitely?
Don’t get us wrong, having a lot of content is wonderful for your website, your reputation, and your audience. However, too much of a good thing is definitely a bad thing in this case. A backlog of years-old articles or well-aged videos can do more harm to your business than good.
The more content you have, the longer it takes for search engines to evaluate your site. While this isn’t a mortal blow, it certainly harms your SEO and can keep your site ranked lower than it should be.
Stocking up huge amounts of content on your site also slows your loading speed. While this may only add a second to your load time, viewers tend to ditch a page if it doesn’t load in under two seconds. When people quickly bounce off your site, your SEO ranking suffers.
Older blogs can also negatively impact your overall content strategy in several key ways. Search engine crawlers assess your content’s relevance and authority by analyzing factors like:
- Keywords
- Outbound Links
- Readability
Outdated content might target different keywords, questions, and audiences from your current strategy. This makes your site appear unfocused in the eyes of Google, weakening your site’s quality and relevance scores. Additionally, if you don’t continually update your posts to conform to current SEO best practices, older content will harm your SEO score.
Purposefully expiring content can increase audience engagement and attract viewers to your site. Some of the most common and effective examples include:
- Webinars
- Exclusive e-books
- Livestreams
Consumers don’t want to miss out on valuable deals, but when they know an e-book will be available indefinitely they can put it on the back burner. Limiting its availability creates a sense of urgency that compels viewers to quickly engage with your content.
At FEAD MEdia, we believe that marketing is more than just simple strategy. It’s about telling your story and building a brand that consumers trust. If you’re interested in enhancing your content strategy, or need help updating your old material, get in touch. We’d love to chat anytime.