Rankings decay. Pages that once drove traffic slip as competitors publish, facts age, and intent shifts. Refreshing old content is often faster than writing new content.
Find candidates
- Search Console → Performance → compare last 3 months vs the previous 3
- Filter for pages with a falling average position or declining clicks
- Prioritise pages that already have impressions — the demand exists
Diagnose why it dropped
- Outdated facts — prices, dates, statistics
- Thin coverage — a competitor now covers the topic more completely
- Intent mismatch — the SERP now wants a different format
- Lost links — a referring page was removed
Update it
- Refresh facts and add this year
- Add the missing subtopics competitors cover
- Improve headings, examples and structure
- Add or fix internal links and structured data
- Update the date only if you genuinely changed the content
Track the result
Note the date, then watch Search Console over 2–4 weeks. If position recovers, apply the same pattern to similar pages.
Pair with a quick audit
Before republishing, run the page through the free on-page audit to catch title, meta and structured-data issues in the same pass.