Content Decay Report - What is it, and how does it work?
This guide will walk you through accessing and using the Content Decay Report in SEOTesting to monitor and address content decay issues.
The Content Decay Report in SEOTesting helps identify pages on your site that have seen a consistent drop in organic clicks over time. This is a valuable tool for maintaining the health of your content and ensuring it remains relevant and effective.
This report uses data from Google Search Console to assess the historical SEO performance of each page on your website. The report summarises monthly data from the last 13 months for each page, comparing the peak month (when organic clicks were at their highest) and the most recent calendar month.
The report displays pages with declining clicks, with the peak month highlighted in green. Thus, you can quickly identify which pages have experienced the most significant drop in clicks.
To investigate further, click on the peak month’s data (the green-highlighted number), which will take you to the Compare Queries Report. This report preloads the comparison between the peak and most recent months, showing which specific queries have lost clicks.
The Content Decay Report helps you pinpoint pages that need attention. By understanding which content is losing clicks, you can refresh and update it, ensuring it stays relevant, authoritative, and competitive in search results.
Here’s why content decay happens and why it’s important to act:
Freshness is a ranking factor: Google favors updated content, especially when freshness is a key ranking factor for certain queries.
Relevance: Outdated facts or broken links can harm user experience and rankings.
Competitors: Other websites may create better content and outperform yours.
Search intent: Google may shift the type of content it favors for a given keyword.
Using the Content Decay Report and following up with a content refresh, you can keep your pages competitive and maximize their SEO performance. To track the impact of your updates, you can set up time-based SEO tests in SEOTesting.
Start on your SEOTesting dashboard and click the ‘Reports’ link that appears on the left-hand toolbar:
From here, scroll down to the ‘Content Reports’ section and click on the report labeled ‘Content Decay’ to access the report:
The report will then load automatically:
You can filter down the list of URLs that appear by using the filter box at the top of the Content Decay Report:
You have different options for filtering:
Contains
Equals
Not Contains
Not Equals
Including RegEx
Excluding RegEx
Using the above filters, you can tailor your Content Decay Report and find only the content pieces from a sub-section of the site that you are interested in:
What is the Content Decay Report in SEOTesting?
The Content Decay Report in SEOTesting helps identify pages on your site that have seen a consistent drop in organic clicks over time. This is a valuable tool for maintaining the health of your content and ensuring it remains relevant and effective.
This report uses data from Google Search Console to assess the historical SEO performance of each page on your website. The report summarises monthly data from the last 13 months for each page, comparing the peak month (when organic clicks were at their highest) and the most recent calendar month.
The report displays pages with declining clicks, with the peak month highlighted in green. Thus, you can quickly identify which pages have experienced the most significant drop in clicks.
To investigate further, click on the peak month’s data (the green-highlighted number), which will take you to the Compare Queries Report. This report preloads the comparison between the peak and most recent months, showing which specific queries have lost clicks.
Why is this report useful?
The Content Decay Report helps you pinpoint pages that need attention. By understanding which content is losing clicks, you can refresh and update it, ensuring it stays relevant, authoritative, and competitive in search results.
Here’s why content decay happens and why it’s important to act:
Freshness is a ranking factor: Google favors updated content, especially when freshness is a key ranking factor for certain queries.
Relevance: Outdated facts or broken links can harm user experience and rankings.
Competitors: Other websites may create better content and outperform yours.
Search intent: Google may shift the type of content it favors for a given keyword.
Using the Content Decay Report and following up with a content refresh, you can keep your pages competitive and maximize their SEO performance. To track the impact of your updates, you can set up time-based SEO tests in SEOTesting.
How to access the Content Decay Report in SEOTesting
Start on your SEOTesting dashboard and click the ‘Reports’ link that appears on the left-hand toolbar:
From here, scroll down to the ‘Content Reports’ section and click on the report labeled ‘Content Decay’ to access the report:
The report will then load automatically:
You can filter down the list of URLs that appear by using the filter box at the top of the Content Decay Report:
You have different options for filtering:
Contains
Equals
Not Contains
Not Equals
Including RegEx
Excluding RegEx
Using the above filters, you can tailor your Content Decay Report and find only the content pieces from a sub-section of the site that you are interested in:
Updated on: 16/10/2024
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