Content decay refers to the gradual decline in the relevance, accuracy, or effectiveness of a piece of content over time. This can lead to a decrease in search engine rankings, traffic, engagement, and conversions.
Examples of causes:
- Outdated information: Content that contains old statistics, outdated best practices, or references to past events may lose relevance and credibility.
- Changes in search algorithms: Search engines frequently update their algorithms, which can cause previously high-ranking content to slip in rankings if it no longer meets the new criteria.
- Increased competition: As more businesses create content on similar topics, the competition for search rankings and audience attention intensifies, potentially leading to a decline in visibility for older content.
- Shifts in audience preferences: Audience interests, needs, and behaviors can change over time, making once-popular content less appealing or relevant.
- Broken links or images: As external resources change or become unavailable, links or images within the content may break, negatively impacting user experience and search engine perception.
- Lack of updates: Content that is not regularly updated or refreshed may lose its relevance and authority compared to newer, more comprehensive resources on the same topic.
- Changes in industry trends or best practices: Industries evolve, and content that does not reflect the latest trends, technologies, or best practices can become obsolete.
Pro tip: As soon as New Year's Eve passes, articles with the previous year in the headline will begin losing rankings. Plan to update the year in January. You can do this manually or use an SEO plugin like All in One SEO, which will automatically update these. For SEO benefits, the content itself should be updated, too.
To combat content decay, website owners should regularly audit their content, update or improve underperforming pieces, and ensure that their content strategy adapts to changes in search algorithms, audience preferences, and industry trends.
Additionally, site owners should find and fix broken links.