I have a guilty confession to make, when I first created this blog over a decade ago, I was just interested in creating a site that was monetized with affiliate links. I signed up for a auto-blogging service targeting keywords such as internet marketing. These services then auto publish to your blog, the content usually has links placed by the author to their service or are affiliate links.
It was an eye-opener on what passes for decent writing. Fortunately I had moderated it so I had final publishing approval. Which was a smart decision, because most of it was awful. At best they were that general sort of forgettable writing that imparts no real value or knowledge. Many had obvious misspellings and were just thinly veiled attempts to get people to click on the links. I rejected many and there are not many that actually got published.
After reviewing these posts for a while, I thought to myself, “I can do a better job writing than this”, and that is how my blogging career was born.
Content Quality is essential for SEO
Since then the quality of your content has gotten even more important for ranking well in the Google SERPs. Even though we now have tools like generative AI at our disposal, it is essential that your content is helpful and useful and not just written for SEO.
Google recently released a new type of Algorithm Update called “Helpful Content Updates” which likely is aimed to weed out some AI generated content and certainly made for SEO content. If you are wondering what Google considers “Helpful Content” reviewing their comments on writing for “People First” is recommended.
So we all know that we need to publish useful and valuable content for people first and SEO second. What do we do about those old posts we have written many years ago that may not be up to our now enhanced quality standards?