Content-Refresh Cycle (SOP)

Purpose

Published content loses freshness, accuracy and rankings over time, and refreshing proven pages often outperforms creating new ones. This SOP turns decay into a predictable, repeatable maintenance rhythm.

When & who

Trigger

Quarterly review, or when a page shows sustained traffic or ranking decline against its baseline.

Frequency

Quarterly

Roles

Content editor, SEO lead, Subject-matter expert

Procedure

1. 1
   Identify decay candidates

   Use the Content Decay Model to list pages with falling impressions, clicks or average position over the last two quarters.

2. 2
   Score and prioritise

   Rank candidates by traffic potential, commercial value and effort so the highest-return refreshes are tackled first.

3. 3
   Audit each page

   Check for outdated facts, dead links, stale statistics, missing entities and gaps against current top-ranking answers.

4. 4
   Rewrite and expand

   Update the copy to be answer-first and current, strengthen the primary intent match and add any missing subtopics or FAQs.

5. 5
   Refresh signals

   Update the publish or modified date honestly, revise the title and meta description, and refresh imagery or schema where relevant.

6. 6
   Re-link and republish

   Add internal links from related pages, resubmit the URL in Search Console and record the refresh in the content log.

7. 7
   Measure the lift

   Review rankings and traffic 4 to 6 weeks later and mark the outcome to inform the next cycle.

Tools

• Google Search Console
• SearchScore Tracker
• Google Analytics