Did you know that online articles should be updated from time to time? Aside from the obvious benefits that come with revisiting and improving one’s older work (which include catching old typos, updating outdated information, and adding new, relevant information), you may be surprised to learn that Google pays attention to the last time an online article was updated and may adjust its position in search results accordingly.
In this week’s Online Writing Insider (How to Effectively Update Online Articles) we share a 12-step process that can help you increase the effectiveness with which you update Hubs as well as other online posts and pages. The steps are as follows:
- Analyze keyword data on your Hub
- Add new content to your Hub
- Add original (or at least legally used) and high quality photos
- Add at least one poll, table, map, or other rich, relevant feature
- Remove broken links
- Make sure that your Hub adequately addresses what is proposed by its title
- Analyze view duration on your Hub
- Reduce the number of Amazon or eBay products (if any) that are featured
- Moderate your comments and place the most recent comments at the top
- Make sure your Hub has an original summary
- Make sure your Hub has attractive, readable formatting
- Know when to delete a Hub that is unredeemable
You can find detailed written explanation of each step in our Learning Center entry on updating Hubs to improve traffic to your work. We hope you find our tips to be useful!
Are there some other online writing tips you’d like us to share with you in podcast form? Tell us about them! Send all feedback, suggestions, and requests to podcast-at-HubPages-dot-com.
HubPages Blog 
Thanks for the info, I have recently been updating my hubs, and this will help
Great advice – it’s amazing how quickly info gets shabby. Thanks.
Thanks for this great hub! I’m new to this website, and I’m still in the process of understanding everything that needs to be understood here. Your hub is useful for me, since I need tips on how I can maintain and update my hubs in a regular basis.
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I love how clear and simple this hub is. HubPages help is always spot-on for me.
Good tips for increasing traffic. I too have been recently updating hubs. It’s surprising how you feel when you re-read an old hub.
When I click the link (How to effectively update…) I get a download for an iTunes file. ????
Glad to hear y’all are updating your Hubs!
Faisal- the podcast can be played by clicking the download link and playing the file using whatever program you like or clicking the the
“Play in new window link.” You can also download the podcast from iTunes.
Rochelle- that text links directly to the podcast file, so that’s supposed to happen.
I am updating my old hubs, too, one at a time. I’m glad you made it clear for us how easy it is to revise our year-old articles.
I found this article useful but I wish you’d go into more details on the 12 steps. I am brand new, fresh off the boat, to online writing, SEO and Hubpages so when you say stuff like analyze keyword data or view duration I’m lost. I keep hearing everyone talk about these things but just in general. Please help.
Hey Savanah! We recommend checking out this Learning Center entry for a more detailed explanation of each step: http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/Update-Hubs-increase-traffic
Hope that helps!
So fantastic
Thanks i love to update my hub 🙂
If you concurrently updates your hub page means its value will be high positions and depend on this performance this page value will be become high positions.
Great information the 12 step process is also relevant to website content I assume?
Yep, Tom Fletcher, it’s relevant to articles published pretty much anywhere 🙂
Thank for your tips, it’s very usefull