5 Great Ways to Organize, Manage, and Optimize Your Content

Starting a new project can feel like a daunting task, but a little inspiration and guidance can go a long way.

When updating content on your blog, this certainly applies. You’ve already done your homework and know it’s the best way to improve traffic and rank higher in Google, but what exactly are you supposed to update? And how are other people tackling their blog content updates?

Well, you’re in luck! We’ve compiled a list of 5 great ways Clariti users are currently managing and organizing content for greater optimization. Ready? Let’s dive in!

A standardized approach

Most approaches to content updating and optimization will share some core characteristics that every piece of blog content should consider. Things like reviewing the heading structure, checking for broken internal and external links, adding or updating alt text, and checking for schema markup.

If you’re new to content updating, a standardized approach is a great first step to get you in the game. If you’re not quite sure which posts to update, we dive a little deeper into the strategy behind updating blog content in this post: How to Update Old Blog Content.

In Clariti, you can create one Project that addresses all the core tasks recommended for a standard content update. The Project could be called “Standard Blog Update” and the Tasks to run through for each post could look like this:

• Add/review heading structure – Is the H1 title competitive? Does the H1 include an old date that needs to be updated (“Top Salad Recipes for Summer 2021”)? Also, consider adding H2 and H3 headers for better post structure.

• Add/review meta description – Make sure it’s competitive and readers will want to click on it.

• Add internal and external links – Give your readers more options for related posts on your blog, and don’t be afraid to link out to reputable resources on other sites.

• Add/optimize images – Update old images or add more images to help explain a topic or process.

• Add/update alt text – Most images should include alt text, be sure to add or update as needed.

• Add video – A popular choice for some bloggers who have readers that prefer to digest their content through video.

• Check for broken links – These could include internal, external, and image links.

• Add/review schema markup – This is special code that helps Google site-crawlers better understand a page – Clariti provides a way to filter this structured data and check for areas in your blog where it may be missing. Check out our post Strategies for Identifying Easy Wins in Your Business to learn how to filter by structured data (JSON-LD) in Clariti.

• Add/review FAQ section – Google likes to see this section on your site with schema markup to better help serve readers with their questions.

• Refresh content – You likely have become a better writer since publishing the post. This is a great time to use an editor’s eye and do some cleanup. Also, consider adding new keywords and removing ones that are no longer aligned with the post.

• Update publish date – For posts that have substantial updates, it’s a great idea to treat it like a new post and republish it to the top of the blog.

A standardized approach will ensure you’re hitting those big ticket items for blog updating and optimization, and can help you get into the swing of things when thinking about refreshing old content.

A simplified, compact approach

If you know there are very specific things that you want to target for your blog updates, and would prefer to see those initiatives singled out, then a compact approach would give you a more focused strategy for those areas of your blog.

A compact approach in Clariti could look a few different ways, with the general idea being that you would have one Project that only includes one specific task.

Projects like “Fix broken links,” ”Add alt text,” or “Check rank changes” are common among Clariti users.

These singular item Projects can make it easier to track things that may be an issue you want to stay on top of (broken links), or maybe a quarterly focus you have for your site that you want to keep front and center (check rank changes).

A large content approach, 2 ways

Tackling large content updates by thinking in sections

When working through large amounts of content, it can be helpful to think in sections to visualize all areas of a post, and find where improvements (or checks) can be made. 

We compiled a list of the most common tasks we’ve seen from Clariti users with large amounts of content. Many of these tasks were found in various Projects like “Holiday Content Refresh,” “Top 50 Update,” and “Q4 Optimization.” 

Here we’ve assigned them to Projects that focus on a specific area of a blog post. If you’re looking to tackle a large list of to-do’s, it might be helpful to create Projects for each section of your blog post and add relevant tasks to complete in that section.

Meta

• Add/review meta description

Copy

• Research keywords
• Add/review heading structure
• Refresh content
• Add internal and external links
• Check for broken links
• Add/review FAQ section
• Add/review schema markup

Images and Video

• Add/optimize images
  • Purchase or photograph new images
  • Optimize image size
• Update the feature image
• Add/update alt text
• Add/optimize video
  • Reshoot/update step-by-step video

Republish

• Update publish date
• Submit for Google Recrawl

Marketing

• Republish to social media accounts
• Send to newsletter subscribers
• Link updated post on other relevant posts

Additionally, if you’re working on a team, you can also create Projects specifically for that team. For example, a Project called “Images and Video” could include all the tasks for the Photo/Video team.

How Pinch of Yum approaches content updates

For an extra dose of inspiration, let’s take a look at how Pinch of Yum is tackling their blog updates.

Since Pinch of Yum has a large number of posts, it’s helpful  to see how they organize and manage  those posts, and what specifically they target for their updates. 

The Pinch of Yum team takes a diverse approach by utilizing a mix of large quarterly Projects and single item Projects that are aimed to target very specific tasks. Their strategy is a great example of how you can mix and match all these approaches to customize an approach that works best for your blog.

Here are a few Projects (and tasks) Pinch of Yum has recently worked on:

• Full revamp for top 50 posts
  • Move first paragraph above 1st image
  • Move related recipes section below recipe card
  • Add H2 headers
  • Change FAQ section name
  • Move FAQ section up higher
  • Ensure each image has alt text
  • Verify that an optimized pin is added

• Q4 Growth Strategy – Post Optimization
  • Move first paragraph to top
  • Move related recipes below card
  • Add FAQ block
  • Move FAQ block higher
  • Add Table of Contents block
  • Update publish date
  • Submit to Google to reindex

• SEO refresh for seasonal posts
  • Add H2 Headers
  • Move related recipe recommendations below card
  • Change FAQ section header name

• Add internal links
  • Add internal links to other recipes

• Add missing alt text
  • Add in missing alt text to images

• Broken Images
  • Fix broken images

A particularly great Project idea is their “Republished posts check” Project that helps them keep track of the posts they made updates to, and then follow up on them by utilizing due dates and future tasks to complete.

• Republished posts check
  • Note traffic changes
  • Note monetization changes
  • Note rank changes

A few more ideas for unique blog types

It’s also worth noting that many Clariti users are diverse in their niches, and some Projects and Tasks might be niche-specific. For example, Pinch of Yum is a food blog. There are also DIY, fashion, pet, medical, and lifestyle blogs, to name a few. We pulled a few ideas together for a little inspiration.

How-To Schema

Google loves when we help them out, and adding a How-To schema will tell Google you have a post that is teaching readers steps to accomplish a task. 

Blog niches that may want to add this schema markup to their posts: 

• Beauty Influencers – “How to clean your makeup brushes”
• Fashion Influencers – “How to tie a men’s bow-tie
• Crafters and DIYers – “How to crochet a scarf”
• Dog trainers – “How to house train your new puppy”
• Doctors offices – “How to prepare your child for a checkup”

Blog niches that should NOT use this schema:

• Recipe blogs – Use a recipe card instead!

Recipe Card

Recipes are a popular search topic, and because of that, Google prefers seeing it in its own structured data markup—the recipe card. These are most often used by food and lifestyle blogs and you can easily add a plugin to your WordPress site to handle this for you.

Clariti provides a great way to filter your posts so you can check for these types of schemas through the structured data (JSON-LD) filter feature.

Hopefully you found a bit of inspiration for your content updating and optimization approach. Let us know which approach you liked best, and tell us what Projects you are currently working on in the comments below!