Updating Old Fintech Blog Posts

Prominent fintechs like Stripe and Venmo publish blog posts because they know they can help educate customers and show wider industry thought leadership.

But constantly producing brand new articles puts you as a marketer under pressure. Especially if you’re leading content efforts at a fintech with limited marketing resources.

You could take another approach that’s often more effective than ‘net new’ publishing. And that’s updating your existing articles.

Why Content Updates Are Worthwhile

Content updates can help your B2B fintech improve your thought leadership, without investing in net new content. You’re 20 percent more likely to report strong content marketing results when you update past content, according to Orbit Media’s recent annual blogger survey.

Here are five ways to do this, that are designed for B2B fintech copywriters, fintech content marketing leaders who work alone, and small B2B fintech marketing teams. 

Read more: The Two Schools of B2B Fintech Ghostwriting

1. Update Only Your Best Performing Articles

Update only your best blog posts. 

• Check your analytics to see how your articles are performing in search.
• Find out which ones connected with readers and which ones were ignored. 
• You may even want to consider deleting any low performers.
  

Once you’ve chosen which articles to update, it’s time to take a closer look at each individual article. 

Make sure the articles on your blog reflect current financial trends and regulations. 

2. Update Your Conversion Points

Specifically, consider whether you should update your:

• Calls-to-action. The actions readers want to take may have changed. Be sure your CTA is relevant to their goals and yours. Whether that’s getting up to speed on industry analysis, hearing stories from their peers, or getting ready to buy financial technology.

• Buttons. If you’ve got a CTA button be sure it still leads to relevant pages.

• Forms. Blogs aren’t only about fintech thought leadership. They can be an effective way to drive traffic to other parts of your website. They can even help generate leads. Make sure to review any lead generation forms like newsletter sign-ups, demo requests, or whitepaper downloads.

When updating your blog posts, keep in mind that the goal should be to help the audience. 

3. Improve Headlines and Subheadings

Great headlines get people to read your articles. Try to:

• Keep headlines tight. The maximum character count for an article indexed by Google runs between 65 and 80 characters.

• Add H2/H3 subheadings. Google uses headings to scan for relevant keywords, which means updated H2/H3 subheads have a better shot of ranking highly.

• Use square brackets. Outbrain has found that parentheses and brackets drive readers’ curiosity, with a 33 percent increase in average post views when using brackets in the title. You can use brackets to call out your audiences by name or point to a specific benefit they’ll get from reading the article.

• Use numbers. People love lists. Would any of your existing articles work better in a list format? By using numbers in your headlines, you can pique reader curiosity.

Tweaking headlines can support broader efforts to rank posts higher in Google search engine result pages (SERPs) too. Just make sure that your articles deliver on the promises they make in their headlines — otherwise your readers will quickly click away. 

Read more: Inspired Examples of B2B Fintech Content

4. Update Links Within the Copy

Where else can you add value to existing blog content? Through links. Linking to your other relevant content is a smart way to show your blog’s expertise and improve credibility. 

Updating Your Internal Links

Whenever updating internal links, make sure your anchor text lets readers know what the link will direct them to. Your anchor text is also a good place to put keywords people use when searching for this topic. Be sure to check all your links still lead somewhere too. If you find any broken links, change them. 

Updating Outbound Links

External links, on the other hand, are a way to connect your readers to other educational and informative resources. It shows empathy for your customers, a little bit of brand humility, and that you’re about helping them out above all else.

5. Format Articles for Easier Reading

Reviewing your fintech’s older articles also gives you a chance to make things easier to read. Think about how people read your content on different devices, different platforms, and different-sized screens. You can improve the formatting of old articles with:

• Snippet-friendly content: Snippets are the little feature boxes you see at the top of a Google SERP. Often, they’re a numbered list of tips that Google has pulled right from the article itself. Look at ways to format your content to make it more snippet-friendly.

• Bullet points: Break up reams of text with bullet points, to improve the article’s flow. This is especially useful for long-form content. 

• Expert quotes: Adding expert quotes to existing content is a proven way to boost the article’s credibility. Look at ways to present expert insights clearly, by using style features like drop quotes.

• Tables: These are especially useful for review articles or comparison guides. For example, your fintech might integrate with a range of different competing software, like cloud accounting platforms, SME banks, or ecommerce platforms. Use tables to quickly show your readers the key points of difference, or to highlight pros and cons.

• Graphics: Maybe you’ve produced relevant graphics since you first published the article. This would be a good time to add them to relevant sections of the article. 

• Screenshots: Or consider using screenshots, to highlight charts, tables, or graphics from third-party research sources. 

• Images: Swap old stock imagery for your own photos if you can. Consider adding headshots or your interviewees or pictures of your customers.

This may seem like a lot of work, but you’ll be surprised by some of the positive results it can deliver.

Read more: What 26 Finserv Brands Can Teach You About Content

Smarter content publishing

Updating your existing fintech blog posts can show existing customers that you care enough to give them information that stays relevant as time goes by. So the next time you’re feeling the pressure to publish brand new content, look at how you can make the content you’ve already published work even harder first.