Are you concerned about the diminishing performance of certain content on your website? This might be an indication of content decay.
Content decay refers to the gradual decline in organic traffic and search rankings over time. If you do not regularly update your content, you risk losing valuable rankings and traffic.
In this article, we will explore the concept of content decay and provide insights on identifying and addressing this issue.
What Is Content Decay?
Content decay refers to the gradual decline in organic traffic and search rankings for a specific piece of content over time.
When you publish new content on your WordPress website, search engines crawl and index it. Over time, this content may start ranking for specific search terms, bringing in new traffic to your website.
However, there are instances where this traffic may begin to decline, and certain content might drop in search rankings, even without any modifications made to the content itself.
It is crucial to note that content decay doesn’t necessarily apply to all old articles on your website. Some older articles may consistently rank well and continue to attract traffic.
Conversely, certain newer content may experience decay. If left unaddressed, this decayed content can have negative implications for your business, sales, and profits.
Causes of Content Decay on Your Website
Several factors can contribute to content decay on a website. Here are some of the main reasons:
- Better content from competitors: Your competitors may produce more comprehensive and valuable content, targeting the same keywords, leading to decreased visibility for your content.
- Declined interest: The keyword may no longer be searched as frequently as before due to changes in user behavior or other factors affecting search volume.
- Keyword cannibalism: Your WordPress blog might have similar content targeting the same keyword, resulting in split search traffic. Google may struggle to determine the user intent and match it with the most relevant content.
- Change in search intent: The reason why people search for a specific keyword might have evolved. For example, you may have an article about different types of solar panels, but the user intent has shifted to purchasing a solar panel.
- Search features: Google regularly adjusts search results to align with user intent. Features like shopping results, featured snippets, local places, and others can divert search traffic to these snippets, impacting your content’s visibility.
Before identifying the cause of content decay, it’s essential to analyze which content pieces on your website have been affected.
