SEO Content Decay & Connecting Traffic to Revenue – Part 1 with Alyssa Corso

In this episode of the Simple and Smart SEO Show, Crystal Waddell chats with SEO consultant and BrightonSEO speaker Alyssa Corso about a topic every content creator should understand—SEO content decay. 

Alyssa shares how content naturally loses visibility over time and outlines a strategic process for updating content to improve performance and generate real business results.

From identifying "money keywords" to understanding the phases of content decay, this episode is packed with insights on how to make your existing content work harder for your business. 

Whether you're a startup with limited resources or a seasoned marketer, Alyssa’s practical strategies will help you tie your content efforts to revenue—and avoid wasting valuable time.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

• SEO Content Decay Defined: Alyssa breaks down the lifecycle of content—from initial spike to inevitable decline—and why regular updates matter.
• Revenue-Driven Content Strategy: Learn how to identify "money keywords" and optimize content that leads to conversions.
• Update with Purpose: Alyssa explains how to use tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and SEOGets to prioritize what to update and when.
• Content Clusters for Niche SEO: Especially in industries like healthcare, Alyssa shows how to build supporting content around core topics.
• Avoid Reactionary SEO: Don’t overreact to algorithm changes—strategic, user-first updates are key.

🔦 Episode Highlights:

"Does this piece of content bring revenue to the business—or does it have another type of value to reach your goals?"
– Alyssa Corso"

There’s more opportunity on the other side of trying than not trying at all."
– Crystal Waddell

✅ Listener Action Items:

• Audit your existing blog content using Google Analytics and Search Console.
• Identify your top revenue-driving keywords—aka "money keywords."
• Create a spreadsheet or use a tool like Monday.com to monitor content age and performance.
• Update content that aligns with your business goals, not just based on rankings.
• Track conversions through GA4, UTM links, or email capture to understand content impact.

Connect with Alyssa:

Linkedin

AlyssaCorso.com

Chapters

• 0:00 tying it back to the revenue driving piece.
• 0:02 Does this piece of content bring revenue to the business?
• 0:05 Or does it have another type of value to reach your goals?
• 0:48 Introduction
• 0:50 Meet Alyssa Corso: SEO Consultant
• 1:27 Alyssa's Journey to Brighton SEO
• 2:13 Becoming a Referable Speaker
• 2:25 Connecting Traffic to Revenue
• 2:35 Identifying Money Keywords
• 3:25 Starting with SEO Content
• 4:08 Targeting Healthcare SEO
• 5:49 Content Decay Explained
• 6:11 Phases of Content Decay
• 7:36 Updating Content Strategically
• 8:54 Tools for Tracking Content Performance
• 12:19 Prioritizing Content Updates

Transcript

Alyssa Corso: [00:00:00] tying it back to the revenue driving piece. 

Does this piece of content bring revenue to the business? 

Or does it have another type of value to reach your goals? 

Because that's important, too. Especially if you're a small business or a startup that has like I said, limited resources.

David Green: Welcome to the Simple and Smart SEO show podcast, where we talk all things, brand building, SEO, helping you connect with your audience, elevate your visibility and grow your business. 

I'm your host, Crystal Waddell, here to bridge the gap between SEO strategy and real world business success. By bringing you insights, stories, and conversations from the SEO community and beyond. 

Whether you're an entrepreneur, marketer, or SEO enthusiast, this is your place to learn, share, and build a brand that stands out. 

So grab a coffee or your favorite tea. And let's dive into Smarter SEO for your business.

Introduction 

Crystal Waddell: welcome back to the Simple and Smart SEO Show podcast. 

Meet Alyssa Corso: SEO Consultant

Crystal Waddell: I am so excited to be here with Alyssa Corso, who is a Brighton SEO speaker. 

And someone that I crossed paths with again on LinkedIn. The streets of [00:01:00] LinkedIn.

They're so friendly. 

But Alyssa, you are an SEO consultant at your own company. 

So could you tell us a little bit about what you do?

Alyssa Corso: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Crystal, for having me on the show. Like Crystal said, I'm Alyssa Corso.

I'm an SEO consultant at my own business. It's called Alyssa Corso, LLC. I focus on helping startups and healthcare companies grow their traffic and revenue through organic search. 

I help through a blog- focused content strategy. And other optimizations on their website. 

Alyssa's Journey to Brighton SEO

Alyssa Corso: I ended up at Brighton SEO in San Diego because I actually attended my first Brighton conference in the UK last April.

April, 2024. 

And I enjoyed it so much. And thought the speakers were so talented and awesome. I wanted to put in my shot to speak at the next one in the US. 

So I pitched about how to update content to increase traffic and revenue because it's a topic that I really enjoy. I like to work on it myself. 

And get into the weeds with [00:02:00] the data and analytics and even into the CMS to update that content.

And then I was invited to speak in November of 2024. 

So I had an amazing time, met so many awesome SEOs. 

And got great feedback on my talk and I'm so grateful and appreciative of it, and I am actually really excited to potentially speak at another talk in the future. 

Crystal Waddell: Awesome. I love that. 

Becoming a Referable Speaker

Crystal Waddell: And you mentioned that your talk was targeted to traffic revenue. Which I think is so important. 

Because in SEO, sometimes it seems like we speak in these abstract terms. Measurables that don't actually equal money. 

Connecting Traffic to Revenue

Crystal Waddell: And so I was just wondering, how did you make that connection between traffic and revenue?

Alyssa Corso: Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. It's really important to have that connection to revenue in SEO. 

Identifying Money Keywords

Alyssa Corso: And the main reason actually how I connected it was to really focus on the keywords that drive the most revenue to the company. 

And that's what I really focused on toward the end of my talk. 

Which was, what are your money keywords? 

Like, what are the keywords that [00:03:00] are driving revenue to your business?

And oftentimes for a lot of companies, it's transactional type keywords. 

Like people who are looking to make a purchase. 

But also keywords that are highly relevant to the company. 

Which sometimes you don't really find those out until later on, right?

Like you have to actually produce SEO content to see. 

So I talked a little bit about how you could find those keywords. 

Which is through just engagement and to create posts. And then update them to drive more traffic. 

And then ultimately the revenue flows in through that. 

So that's how I made that connection and that's also how I went through it in my talk to identify those things.

Starting with SEO Content

Crystal Waddell: That is so interesting. And I think one thing that I can pull out of that immediately is that you just have to do it. 

And then you learn through the doing. 

And I think that makes so many people uncomfortable. Because I feel like people want to be able to start with the exact answer. 

One thing [00:04:00] that, I feel like life kind of reveals, but SEO definitely reveals. 

Is that what you think is not always what is reality?

And there's more opportunities on the other side of trying than not trying at all. 

Or being afraid to start. 

And so what I hear from you: start. 

See what resonates, and then, how do you pull from that?

Like what's the process then for, identifying what makes sense for your specific brand? 

Alyssa Corso: Yeah, absolutely. 

Targeting Healthcare SEO

Alyssa Corso: I think the first thing when you're looking to just start. 

Is to really identify those type of clusters those areas of your business that you know, that your target audience is already thinking about. 

So as I mentioned, I work a lot in healthcare. So a lot of times those are health conditions, right? 

Like they are the health conditions that your company is helping the user. 

To, manage their condition. Or find a medication or find a virtual solution. That those are some of the areas that I've worked in the past.[00:05:00] 

So identify those health conditions straight out. 

And then go a little deeper and say, what can I write about? Or what type of page can I put on my website? 

That will find those users?

One example, just quickly. 

Is, if you are targeting people with diabetes. 

And you know that they're looking for a certain medication to manage it. You might also want to have a topic cluster on lifestyle changes. 

Foods to eat. 

Different ways to exercise, things like that. 

Because those are like, parallel. Or they're running alongside the other topics of medication and management.

So you know that those people are similar to the people who are looking for medication. 

So identifying those topics, you can produce content around those. 

And the whole idea of updating it. Is to stay relevant and to stay competitive. So that's also what you want to bake into your process.

How am I managing this content if it has been published for over six months and it only has, 20 clicks per month? 

Something like [00:06:00] that. 

And I know that the traffic volume is higher than that. How can I update my content so that I can stay relevant? And then also show Google that we are authoritative on this topic? 

And I'm going to update my content to make it more valuable to the reader. And therefore rank higher.

So those are some things that you can consider when you're making a process. 

Content Decay Explained

Crystal Waddell: That is such an awesome segue into this concept of content decay. 

And could you please explain what Content decay is? 

And then we can discuss further this process for updating content? 

Alyssa Corso: Absolutely. 

So content decay is the natural decay in the traffic that your article will experience after it's published and live on your website.

There are several different phases.

Phases of Content Decay

Alyssa Corso: The first phase in the content decay process is the spike phase. 

After you publish your content for the first time, you might see a growth like a spike in traffic essentially. 

But then you might lose some of that traffic in the trough phase. 

Also this process, it could take actually like a couple of years. [00:07:00] Or most likely a couple of months. After you first publish it. 

And this is essentially what you're likely going to see. 

After the trough phase, you'll then enter the growth phase where you're going to see a significant growth in the traffic. 

But then it'll probably plateau.

So you're not seeing much growth, you're not seeing a much of a decline. It's staying steady. But then essentially, you're going to lose a majority of your traffic in the decay phase. 

So this is the main idea. 

Where traffic updates are very relevant. 

Because I read a study done by Animalz. 

Where, if you actually update your content after the decay phase. 

You could see increase in weekly traffic by 55%. 

So essentially you're delaying the decay phase. 

And prolonging the life of your content. 

And the traffic that you're going to see there. 

Crystal Waddell: Okay. So you said after that the spike phase, did you call it the trial phase? 

Alyssa Corso: The trough phase. So like it just like declines, like a TR a trough.

Crystal Waddell: Trial. [00:08:00] T-R-O-W-E-L. 

Alyssa Corso: T-R-O-U-G-H. 

Crystal Waddell: Oh, okay. Gotcha.

I googled to make sure I was like saying, pronouncing it correctly and it's a strange word. 

Yeah. No. Okay. So that makes sense. 'cause I was I was like what's the trial? What trial are we doing? Okay, perfect. I'll make sure that is like the captions match up with that. 

Updating Content Strategically

Crystal Waddell: So how did you even become aware of this and become interested in it. And realize, like this is the process of how you should update your content. 

Alyssa Corso: Yes. So it actually really stems from having a startup background, working with a small company that doesn't have much resources. 

So you don't necessarily have the budget to be pumping out new content all the time.

You primarily want to make the most out of the content that you already produced. That's really where it comes from for me. 

But the way that I became aware of this is just researching. How do I properly update a piece of content? So that I'm making the most out of the money that we already invested into it? 

And the resources, of [00:09:00] course. Time and other people that you're working with to produce this.

So that's really where it stems from. And then from there, I've also just have done trial and error. 

Which is what I spoke about in the first part portion of my talk. 

Which is that in the beginning when I started doing SEO, I was just updating content just because it felt like it needed an update or a refresh.

I wasn't really being very strategic about my process. 

And, you do see like little blips of increases of traffic when you do that. 

But what the goal is that you have a whole system going where you can predict. That once you conduct an update, you'll see a traffic increase. 

Not just like an update here or an update there.

Tools for Tracking Content Performance

Crystal Waddell: So are you using tools like Google Search Console or Google Analytics? 

To see when to do this? Or when to implement the strategy of updating the content? 

Alyssa Corso: Yes. I use three tools, primarily. Google Analytics, definitely. 

You can just compare the last [00:10:00] 90 days to the previous 90 days or three months, whichever you wanna do. 

And just get a view of what the traffic performance. 

Is it going down? Is it increasing? Is it plateauing? That will give you an idea of where you are in the content decay process after you publish your article. 

You could also, of course, use Google Search Console. 

And use clicks and impressions to get an idea. You could also look at average position. 

If you notice that the average position is going up. And your article is getting pushed down essentially. Then maybe it's time for an update. But I also like to use a tool called SEO Gets. 

Because it takes the information from Google Search Console. And makes it into a really nice, where you can clearly see. 

Your content that's decaying and content that's growing. 

And that's just a great way, that's just a great tool to visualize all of that as well.

What was that tool called again? SEO gets.com. 

Crystal Waddell: So I've always wondered how best to use the compare feature in say Google [00:11:00] Search Console. 

So that's really great to see an actual use case.

And you mentioned that the process can take anywhere from six months to a couple of years.

How do you know which timeline to follow?

Alyssa Corso: Yeah. The way that you I think when you conduct an A content update, you don't necessarily have to make sure it's already decaying, right? 

Like ideally you want to actually get ahead of it. So if you're noticing like slight traffic decline. 

And then you put your keyword into Google and you notice that your competitors are actually like.

Frequently updating the content maybe every six months. 

Or every, even every five months. 

Then that could be an indicator that you should update your content as well. Because it seem, it would seem that Google is prioritizing the fresher content. 

Especially if it's a Y-M-Y-L niche. I can't emphasize that enough.

Because that means the content is impacting someone's life. And there might be some new research or information that you should incorporate.

If you aren't in a Y-M-Y-L niche. And your, [00:12:00] maybe your competitors aren't really refreshing their content. 

Then you might want to just look at the traffic patterns of the page. And identify where you might be falling in the content decay process. 

So if you're actually noticing a plateau.

Then maybe that is actually where you're going to update because you're not yet reaching the decay. 

And it's going to be easier to recover or actually grow the traffic instead of just seeing a decline or a decay. 

Which will end up happening inevitably, next. 

I also just want to add another aspect of this, which which is Google algorithm updates.

I mentioned this in my talk because it's actually very important to consider this. 

Because Google algorithm updates can impact the content decay phases and process. 

If a Google algorithm update occurs, you might notice that your piece of content actually reaches the decay phase a lot faster. Or a lot sooner. Than it would've maybe if one didn't occur.

And that's of course, because there are different [00:13:00] aspects that go into the algorithm update. 

But I actually emphasize caution here. And to not overreact and say, now we need a content update right now. Because it could ultimately hurt you in the long run because you were reactive. 

Maybe you changed too much of the content and you didn't make it more helpful to the user. And instead just reacted to an update for the algorithm.

So that's just a piece of advice that I would give. 

Because that can impact in the long run your content strategy and your content update strategy. 

Prioritizing Content Updates

Crystal Waddell: And it makes me think too, okay. 

How do you prioritize which content to do first? Is there like a, do you. Put a spreadsheet together of all of your content?

And then a caveat question too is what about if you have content that's old, but it continues to rank? 

Does that fall in that category of leave it alone? Because I've always heard that if it's already ranking number one, two, or three. 

Leave it. But what do you think that is like a blanket statement? Or is there a checklist to follow in terms of what to update [00:14:00] when?

Alyssa Corso: Absolutely. So for your first question on deciding what content to update and like how to decide. 

It depends on what kind of processes you have in place. 

I think my favorite process to have in place is a Monday board. 

And or you could simply use a Google sheet where if the article was published more than six months ago, you have some sort of formula. 

Or, automation going on where it says like it's, this is ready for an update. 

It doesn't mean you have to update it. You could then crosscheck your competitors. You can crosscheck the traffic. There's so many things to check. 

It just is indicating a simple timeline of this has been published for six months and you might wanna take a look.

So that's one way to just identify. But another portion, just tying it back to the revenue driving piece. 

Is that does this piece of content bring revenue to the business? 

Or does it have another type of value to reach your goals? 

Because that's important, too. Especially if you're a small business or a startup that has like I said, limited resources.

It might not be worth [00:15:00] to, to bring an article out of the decay phase if it's not bringing revenue or any value to your business. 

So that's that's one area that I want to advise people on. 

Ask yourself, how does this impact my business? And why am I updating it? 

Crystal Waddell: How do you determine if it's bringing revenue? Do you set up a specific event in GA 4? Or how do you measure that? 

Alyssa Corso: Yes. So to determine if the content is bringing in revenue, you could set up an event in GA 4 for what you consider a conversion.

You can also use tools like Amplitude. Or other conversion tracking tools. I like to use UTM links for this reason. So that you know where the conversion is coming from. 

So yes, you could set up a conversion for whatever that looks like. Maybe it's a purchase. Especially if you're e-com.

Or if you're a SaaS business, whatever your sort of funnel looks like. 

Once that person reaches that step, it's considered a conversion. 

But for SEO blog content, I also [00:16:00] think other metrics are super important here, too. 

Which is the click through rate. Are people clicking in to your funnel? Or the purchasing step at all? 

Because if they are, and that's a high click-through rate, there might be other opportunities to optimize there.

Could you perhaps improve the funnel to make it shorter or more pleasant for the user? 

Especially if they're in the top of funnel or middle funnel and are exploring your product? 

Or could you get an email? Email capture is great too. 

It would indicate that someone is interested in learning more and staying connected to your brand.

So these are events that I would encourage, people to track. 

Because they are indicators of revenue driving content when people are landing on the pages.