Content and Editorial
Content refresh and decay
Fix the pages that are quietly losing ground, which is usually cheaper than writing new ones. It is a defined piece of work rather than a retainer line item.
What does a content refresh and decay actually involve?
Fix the pages that are quietly losing ground, which is usually cheaper than writing new ones. In practice that means decay detection: pages losing position or clicks against their own history rather than against a benchmark, and then the harder half: diagnosis per page, because decay from a competitor’s new page needs a different fix from decay from staleness.
Why this work exists
The reason this has its own page is that it gets folded into something larger and then quietly dropped when the larger thing runs late.
Content and Editorial is the wider programme; this is the piece that gets scoped first more often than any other.
The nearest piece of work to it is refreshing on decay rather than on the calendar. Where that is already handled, this moves faster than the estimate; where it is not, the two get done together or neither of them holds.
What good looks like
It is right when the exceptions are written down rather than remembered.
The gap between that and where most accounts start is why this is scoped as content refresh and decay rather than as a line inside something larger. Removing the pages that would not be worth writing today is the usual second step once it is in place.
When this is the right work
What makes this the next piece of work:
- Traffic is flat while publishing continues
- Pages that used to rank have slipped and nobody noticed
- Your best page still quotes a statistic from three years ago
If none of those is true, something else is probably the constraint, and the Content and Editorial overview maps the alternatives. The usual neighbours are mapping redirects before anything is deleted and auditing the confident numbers, which age fastest.
What the work covers
Four things get done:
- Decay detection: pages losing position or clicks against their own history rather than against a benchmark, which is where most of the time goes and almost none of the budget.
- Diagnosis per page, because decay from a competitor’s new page needs a different fix from decay from staleness, done before anything downstream is committed to.
- Fact and figure auditing, since confident specific numbers age fastest. Where the documentation and the actual behaviour part company.
- Refresh rather than rewrite where the page has history worth keeping. Worth doing badly rather than not at all, if time is short.
How it runs
How an engagement on this actually proceeds.
Agreeing the measure
The number this will be judged on is fixed before the work starts. Agreeing it afterwards is how both sides end up disappointed.
Finding the constraint
Most of the available gain sits in one or two places. The first job is working out which, rather than improving everything by a little.
Working in public
Decisions get written down where the client can see them as they are made, so nothing arrives as a surprise in a monthly report.
What each part runs into
Each piece has its own friction:
- Decay detection: pages losing position or clicks against their own history rather than against a benchmark, harder in Singapore because of a reporting line that averages away the market in question
- Diagnosis per page, because decay from a competitor’s new page needs a different fix from decay from staleness – in Delhi NCR, complicated by the fact that a market where buyers qualify by area rather than by city
- Fact and figure auditing, since confident specific numbers age fastest, which in Bengaluru runs into a competitive set that changes street by street
- Refresh rather than rewrite where the page has history worth keeping: the Surat version of this has to deal with a decision made by somebody who never visits the site
What not to do
Writing a new page on a subject you already cover. The old page has the links and the history; the new one competes with it.
Naming it upfront is the difference between a result and a report about effort.
How it is measured
Recovered clicks on refreshed pages, and time from decay detection to fix. That is the number the work is judged on, reported alongside whatever the business already tracks rather than instead of it.
Agreed before the work starts, so there is no argument about the result afterwards.
What you end up with
What arrives at the end of it: a ranked decay list with a diagnosis per page, and refreshed pages that keep their history.
Scoped so the first action can be taken the same week it arrives.
How it differs by sector
Three sectors where this work looks materially different:
- Legal and professional services brings its own limit: high-value, high-intent local search under advertising rules that vary by jurisdiction.
- Real estate and property, constrained by the fact that portals own the generic demand, so the win is locality authority and the specific listing.
- Nonprofit and NGO: Two audiences with nothing in common: donors and the people served. so this work has to account for that before anything else.
The industry pages carry the rest of that detail. Legal and professional services and Real estate and property are the two where this piece of work most often decides the outcome.
Common questions
How often should content be refreshed?
When the data says so. Scheduled refreshes mostly touch pages that were fine and miss the ones that were not.
Is updating the date enough?
No, and search engines are good at telling the difference. A refresh means the content changed in a way a reader would notice. What this leaves out is in Citations and NAP consistency, and some of it in Local landing pages.
What is a realistic timeline?
Two to three weeks to establish what is true, then a phase sized to the finding. Quoting the whole thing before the diagnosis would be guessing, and the guess is usually wrong in the expensive direction. When this comes up in a pitch, London and Los Angeles are the pages that settle it.
What do you need from us?
Access to the measurement and to whoever knows the history. Most of the delay on work like this comes from waiting for access rather than from the work itself. The common mistake is covered in Ecommerce and retail; the expensive one in Education and training.
Is the output a report or a change?
Both, in that order. A ranked decay list with a diagnosis per page, and refreshed pages that keep their history. The report exists so the change is accountable, not instead of it. AI Automation and Workflows if the constraint is budget, AI Platform Optimization if the constraint is time.
Ask about content refresh and decay
Write what you would say on a call. The reply will be the same thing we would have said.
Work out what to fix before what to add
A conversation about the problem, not a presentation about us. Bring whatever data exists.