Content enhancement or consolidation: which should you do and when?

As content marketers, it’s easy to think that to increase our web traffic we should just create more content. But, when it comes to online content, more isn’t always more. If your website has hundreds upon hundreds of pages and blog articles, but only a few that are performing well, then it might be time to look at where you can enhance or consolidate your content.

In this article, we’ll look at what to do when you’ve got heaps of useful, interesting content, but it isn’t producing results. Should you improve what exists or merge and simplify? Read on to find out.

What is content enhancement?

Content enhancement is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: updating, expanding, and improving your existing content. By enhancing your content, you could achieve:

• Better rankings in the SERPs
• Increased visits to your site
• Higher engagement with potential customers
• Increased conversions

An analysis of around 15,000 URLs across 20 industries found that pages that were significantly updated saw an average improvement of eight positions in Google rankings, compared to pages that were not updated. (source: Republish AI)

How to enhance your content

Steps you could take to enhance your content include:

• Updating facts, stats, and examples
• Improving structure and readability
• Optimising for different search terms
• Adding new photographs or visuals
• Increasing the amount of content and adding depth
• Including expert opinions or quotes

What is content consolidation?

Content consolidation refers to merging multiple content pieces together into one blog post or page that is stronger. By consolidating some of your existing content, you can hope to achieve:

• Clearer topical authority
• Stronger page performance
• A simpler site architecture and user journey

Content enhancement or consolidation? How to decide

Now that you know what each tactic is, it’s time to decide which you need to use. The key to both is that the content or information that you already have is good, but it could be working harder for you.

It’s a good idea to add these as part of your annual content audit. Only about 33% of marketers conduct content audits twice per year while 16% never do audits at all – which leaves opportunities for optimisation untapped. (source: Schnoco)

You could set up a simple spreadsheet or table with a list of all your pages and posts down one side, with your actions on the other. For example:

When to enhance

You should consider enhancing the content on pages that aren’t performing as well as they could. These might be pages or blog posts that you haven’t looked at in a while, and so they’ve become out of date, or posts that weren’t written with Search Everywhere in mind, so could do with a refresh.

You should choose to enhance your content when:

• The page is ranking, but it could be better
• Content is out of date
• Content is evergreen
• You feel like the content is useful or engaging, but it isn’t currently ranking

When to consolidate

Content consolidation works best when you have a lot of pages or posts that are all about the same topic and are competing for keywords. Brands and businesses that have grown their content quickly but without a long-term plan will often find that content consolidation can work well for them.

You should choose to consolidate content when:

• Several pages are competing for the same search terms
• Posts have similar themes and aren’t performing well

Questions to ask before you decide whether to consolidate or enhance

To help you decide which is better, here are some questions that you should ask yourself before consolidating or enhancing the content.

1. Is the intent unique or duplicated? If unique, it’s enhancement, if duplicated it should be consolidated
2. Does the page have authority or backlinks that are worth preserving? If it’s yes, then it’s enhancement – or consolidation, but this should be the page that the others are merged into
3. Can this page stand alone, or is it stronger combined with others? This one is fairly self-explanatory!

SEO considerations for content consolidation and enhancement

There’s more to think about than just updating the content while you’re working on this. There are also some things you’ll need to think about to ensure that your changes don’t have a negative effect on your SEO.

Redirecting URLs

If you’re consolidating content, don’t forget to redirect the URLs from the pages that you’re taking down. This will ensure that any links you have on other sites don’t become broken. Remember to redirect to the page you’ve consolidated to ensure that any authority is passed over.

Internal links

Have a think about your internal linking structure as you’re working on your content project – it’s a good way to tick two content jobs off your to-do list. When you’re consolidating, check that you’re not losing any internal links, but also be sure to look for more internal linking opportunities. Especially watch out for your topic clusters.

Measuring success

This is arguably the most important point on this list. After all, if you’re not measuring your results, then how will you know if all your hard work is paying off? It’s pretty easy to see if your efforts have worked, you’ll simply need to look at your rankings and the amount of traffic to that specific page and compare them to what they were before you updated it.

Content tactics that work

Content enhancement and content consolidation aren’t conflicting ideas. They’re two tools that are worth having in your arsenal. After all, it’s better to work with the content that you already have than create reams of new content and risk content bloat.

Enhancement helps pages perform better by providing useful, up to date content. Consolidation helps prevent different pages competing for traffic and authority.

By regularly reviewing your content and making decisions to improve, combine, or even remove pages, your site will become stronger and easier for visitors to use and search engines to crawl.

Need advice on content enhancement or consolidation?

If you’re not sure how content enhancement or consolidation could work or which one might be the best approach for you then get in touch for more helpful advice.