Every copywriter and SEO knows that producing high-quality, engaging content is essential for driving organic traffic to your website. However, creating new content on a regular basis can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.
In this case study, I will explain how I repurposed a client’s existing content to increase their website’s organic traffic, improve rankings, and reach a wider audience without having to start from scratch.
Background
This client used a digital marketing agency which provided them services for SEO audit, content creation and link-building. Even though they have created 50+ pages in a short period of time, there weren’t any significant changes in terms of organic traffic or ranking.
The major issue was that the agency created articles to target exact keywords instead of grouping similar keywords together. Unfortunately, this tactic resulted in duplicate content and keywords cannibalization.
I analysed 72 articles produced from the same agency. In the end, I decided to only keep 18 articles. I extracted the useful text from the discarded 51 articles to optimise the chosen article, then 301 redirected to the optimised article.
Timeframe: 2 months
Implementation
- Step 1. Perform Content Audit
- Step 2. Map content into topic cluster
- Step 3. On-page Optimization
- Step 4. Redirect
- Step 5. Internal Linking
Step 1. Perform Content Audit
To understand where the blog was sitting at the moment, the first step I did was to perform a content audit and collect all the necessary data to decide my next step.
I created a Google Sheet where I listed out all the content available on the blog. As content strategy should not be considered as an one-off project, I also create the sheet for long-term use, so that the client can keep a centralised content inventory without going through a similar process again
This is what I’ve included in my document:
- Blog post URL
- Primary keyword and topic cluster
- Meta Title and Meta Description: Crawled from ScreamingFrog and also conditional format in Google Sheet to highlight those which exceed the length.
- Google Search Data: You can easily export the data from Search Console and use VLOOKUP formula to match Clicks, Impressions, CTR and Positions to individual URL.
- Category
Optional:
- Link to the draft: Useful to quickly find the original document to make changes
- Customer Journey: Which stages are they in (Awareness, Consideration, Purchase)?
- CTA: Does the article include any call to action to guide
- Image: Apart from the Featured Image, do the post include any additional images or videos that might be helpful for users
- FAQ Schema
Step 2. Map content into topic cluster
While preparing the content inventory, I also identified and categorised each article into different topic clusters. Then I reviewed all the articles in the same cluster and further divided them into sub-categories.
In this step, it was important to highlight all the keywords and articles that fall under the same sub-category. Then I would decide which one to keep, considering its organic performance in Google Search Console, the number of organic keywords (using Ahrefs or other SEO tools) and the quality of the original articles.
Step 3. On-page Optimization
With the content organised and mapped, I started to optimise articles. The main goal of each article should be easy to read, adding values to users and engaging.
Here’s what I’ve done
- Quick keyword research: To identify any content gap and questions people may have
- Restructure and Merge content
- Optimise content for Featured Snippets: Make content more easy to scan by using bullet point, numbered list or short paragraph when possible
- Create infographics and screenshots
- Add Table of Content and FAQ schema
- Incorporate CTA more naturally and not only in the end of the article
Step 4. Redirect
After republishing the articles. I manually set up 301 redirects for all the discarded articles. As the client was using WordPress, I can simply implement this with a Plugin. Or alternatively, reach out to your company’s developers for support.
Step 5. Internal Linking
Internal linking can help users to find related content on the same topic and allow Google to crawl other pages. Also, by strategically linking within the same topic cluster, it can demonstrate your topic authority and provide context for Google to understand what your website is about.
To ensure I haven’t left out any links, I created a separate spreadsheet to keep track of the internal linking and what anchor texts I’ve used (so to remind myself not to use the same one over and over again):
| Topic | URL Source | URL Target | Anchor |
In Google Spreadsheet, you can add a Pivot Table to show how many URLs you have added for each page and how many links are received internally for each article.
Results
The screenshot showed the organic performance of the 18 optimized articles.
Some of the highlights:
- Increased impression by 400% and clicks by 486%
- Acquired 80+ Featured Snippets
- 500+ organic keywords on 1st page
Conclusion
In this project, 70% of original content was redirected – imagine the budget and resources wasted on those articles. This serves as a reminder of the importance of a carefully crafted content strategy.
