So many businesses start content marketing struggling with a newer or lower-scoring domain, which is an uphill battle even with great content. In other cases, companies may have strong domains working in their favor, and their content needs a refresh.

Google loves current, up-to-date content, and so do your readers. Refreshing an existing post allows you to take advantage of the specific URL’s history while creating new, Google-friendly content. It’s the best of both worlds, and it’s a vital way to keep (or get) your content to the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) despite an increasingly competitive online market.

Today, we will show you how we helped Loomly by refreshing some existing blog posts to increase individual click-through rates and monthly traffic by up to 827% for some of the posts. 

The client 

Loomly is an all-in-one social media management platform. You can craft, schedule, and auto-post social content, manage multiple calendars, respond to comments, mentions, and DMS, and organize your assets in a digital library all from one place. They also have exceptional social media analytics to help you understand how your campaigns perform on multiple platforms.

Loomly was founded in 2016 and has since become a popular platform in the social media marketing industry, growing its domain alongside its business. 

The challenge 

Loomly had a slightly unconventional challenge when they came to Codeless to help with their content. 

Unlike most brands that start with a low domain authority and need to claw their way up and start with a variety of keywords (including low volume or low competition keywords) to rank, Loomly started with a strong domain authority and URLs of long-standing blog posts. History and momentum were working in their favor, but despite that, their content was outdated and not ranking well.

Since social media platforms and best practices change constantly, social media resources need to keep up just as fast.

The solution 

Updating existing content while reusing the URL is an outstanding opportunity, as it takes less time for those posts to rank, all else being equal. As a result, updating existing blog posts became the core focus of our work with Loomly. 

Let’s take a look at the strategy and process we used. 

1. We assessed the existing content 

The first thing we noticed when looking at Loomly’s content was that there was a ton of ranking potential. A large number of blog posts were ranking for solid keywords, but the content itself needed to be updated. Some of the blog posts were short and not content-focused, which provided an opportunity for those topics to be expanded on with more in-depth and actionable blog posts. 

2. We reviewed their overall site 

Using Ahrefs, we compiled a list of Loomly’s existing blog posts and looked at the top keywords they were ranking for, those keywords’ potential search volume and keyword difficulty, and the posts’ current ranking position. The strength of Loomly’s domain and the age of the specific URLs (with some existing over five or six years) was working in their favor. 

3.  We prioritized CTR 

While assessing Loomly’s content, we quickly noticed that they had relied heavily on definition-focused content. They’d target a keyword like “photo dump meaning” or “what is Facebook Live,” and then create a short post that defined the term in question. 

Five or six years ago, this was a solid strategy. A well-written description would allow you to rank high in Google and potentially appear as a featured snippet.

Now, this strategy is less effective. While appearing in a featured snippet never hurts, that shouldn’t be your content’s entire value or strategy. Definition-style content that features phrases in the keywords like “meaning,” “definition,” or “what is” is a need almost filled by Google. In most cases, people search for these phrases to find a quick answer through a featured snippet. As a result, they’re incredibly unlikely to click on your site. 

Featured snippets dominate as much as 90% of the search traffic for definition-focused keywords. This will be even more relevant with advances in AI and hurt overall traffic, so it’s an even better time to focus on longer-form, in-depth content.

To help Loomly successfully drive valuable traffic to their site, we shifted away from the strategy of targeting definition-focused keywords, and we intentionally excluded them from our content efforts.

Instead, we looked for existing URLs with keywords that had a solid information-based intent; people were looking for resources, in other words, and not just a quick answer. 

Instead of “photo dump meaning,” we prioritized keywords like “social media marketing career,” “unhide Facebook post,” and “Instagram Story ideas.” Not only were these topics that we could create strong resources around, but they were also topics that Loomly’s potential customers would be searching for. This allowed us to not only help them get more traffic but to get more traffic which was valuable to lead generation and brand awareness. 

4.  We created new content while reusing existing URLs 

After determining which URLs and keywords to focus on, we got to work with content creation.

We created entirely new posts for the target keywords and then (once approved by the client) uploaded them to the existing URL.

We worked with our team of writers, all of whom are experienced in social media marketing writing, to develop long-form and high-value resources. The posts weren’t just defining a meaning anymore, but they were walking readers through technical concepts like how to set up local marketing campaigns or unhide a Facebook post.

The content was all written while considering Loomly’s target audience of professional social media marketers and marketing teams. The content took users through niche topics, and it was all written with the latest best practices and visuals from each social media platform. 

Our team of editors fact-checked each article to ensure that all content was up-to-date and that the copy was strong before sending it to Loomly for review. 

The results 

Our refreshed content strategy has already had significant impacts on Loomly’s traffic changes. Multiple blog posts are seeing monthly increases in traffic ranging from 70% all the way up to 827% since they’ve been updated. 

The blog post “How to Unhide a Facebook Post” is now generating 215 monthly site visitors, which is a 70% increase in traffic. 

The “11 Marketing Hashtags” post drives 73 unique monthly visitors at a 239% increase and ranks fourth in the SERPs. 

Our guide to local marketing is now driving 121 monthly visitors at a 310% increase.

And finally, our “Social Media Stories” post is driving 341 unique monthly visitors at an 827% increase and is now ranking in the sixth position of the SERPs. It’s outperforming the estimated keyword volume of 150 and is ranking for 18 new keywords. 

It’s important to note that these posts aren’t just driving more clicks; they’re also designed to be much more successful at their intended goal. You don’t want traffic to come to your site, find an answer, and bounce; you want to establish stronger brand awareness, develop relationships, and position your product as the solution that customers need.

By shifting away from “what is” glossary-styled content and creating actual resources, we were able to help Loomly do that. We re-optimized their content with featured in-text microcopy and CTAs that explained how Loomly could solve a specific need being discussed. You can see that in our post on social media stories here:

By optimizing posts, Loomly got more high-quality traffic and had all the tools they needed to drive users to the next stage of the digital sales funnel, whether signing up for a lead magnet or starting a free trial. 

Conclusion 

By creating new content for Loomly’s existing high-potential URLs, we were able to help them leverage their well-earned momentum and convert it into real traffic. Updating existing content— whether it’s just a refresh with newly updated facts or an entire rewrite like we were doing— is an easy way to get more out of the content you’ve already invested in, and this case study proves that.

Your content should be working for you. That means driving the right kind of traffic to your site and ideally driving that traffic to take a specific action for you. If that’s not happening, it’s time to find a way to ensure you’re switching it up. 

Whether you need help updating (or rewriting!) existing content or starting from scratch, we can help. Learn more about how Codeless works here.