---
name: refresh-decaying-content
description: Use when pages that used to perform are losing traffic and you need to decide what to update and what to leave.
---

# Refresh Decaying Content

Traffic decay has several distinct causes and they need opposite responses, but the standard reaction - update the date, add a few hundred words, resubmit - is applied to all of them. A page losing clicks because a SERP feature appeared above it cannot be fixed by editing the page. Diagnosis first, editing second, and for a meaningful share of decaying pages the correct action is consolidation or removal.

## What you need first

- Search Console data comparing the same period year on year, clicks and impressions separately
- the current SERP for the page's main queries
- a list of your own pages covering overlapping topics

## Method

1. Split impressions from clicks. Impressions steady with clicks falling means the SERP changed above you or your snippet aged; impressions falling means you lost rankings. These need different work.
2. Check whether the queries the page won on have shifted. Pages often keep their rankings on terms that stopped being asked, which no amount of rewriting recovers.
3. Look at what now ranks. If the result type changed - a tool, a video carousel, a forum thread - decide whether you can compete in that format at all before editing the text.
4. For genuine ranking loss, rewrite the section that answers the primary query rather than adding new sections. Additions dilute; most recovered pages get shorter.
5. If two of your pages both rank weakly for the same query, consolidate into the stronger URL and redirect the other. Two half-relevant pages compete with each other more than with anyone else.
6. Update the visible date only when the substance changed. Timestamp changes without content changes teach nothing to crawlers and mislead readers.

## What this produces

A per-page decision - rewrite, consolidate, reformat or leave - with the diagnosis that justified it recorded.

## Where this goes wrong

- Refreshing pages by adding words, which lowers the answer density that earned the ranking in the first place
- Treating seasonal troughs as decay by comparing against last month instead of the same month last year
- Refreshing the pages with the largest traffic loss first when the recoverable ones are usually mid-tail pages sitting at positions 8 to 20

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From the QuQi skill library - https://www.quqi.io/skills/refresh-decaying-content