Rewrite: Article ranks position 5-20 but is losing ground, has clear entity or E-E-A-T gaps, or was written before semantic SEO was the priority. Rewriting reorganizes structure, adds entities, injects experience signals, and re-engineers the featured snippet target.
\nRefresh: Article ranks position 1-5 and has good signals. Only update stale statistics, add new FAQ pairs, update dateModified. Do not restructure or rewrite performing content.
Create new: Article ranks position 21+ with no impressions, or the existing page targets the wrong intent. Redirect old URL to new page if the new page replaces the old one completely.
\nBefore changing anything, understand what ranks above you and why.
\nStep 1: Pull top 5 URLs for the target keyword.
\nVia DataForSEO SERP endpoint or manual SERP check.
\nStep 2: Content inventory per competing URL.
\nFor each of the top 5, record:
\nStep 3: Gap matrix.
\nBuild a simple table: competitor topic coverage vs your current coverage. Every sub-topic in 3/5 competing pages that your article doesn't address = a critical rewrite target.
\nPull the Google NLP API analysis for your article and for the top-ranking competitor article.
\nCompare entity salience scores:
\nFor each entity gap:
\nRun eeat-factor-extractor on the current article to identify which signals are absent. Then inject:
Experience signals (minimum 2 per article):
\nExpertise signals:
\nAuthority signals:
\nTrust signals:
\nH1 optimization:
\nH2 restructuring:
\nFeatured snippet engineering:
\nInternal linking improvements:
\ndateModified in Article schema after rewriteBefore republishing, verify:
\ndateModified updated in Article schemaeeat-factor-extractor — signal inventory before Phase 3koray-content-brief — brief structure that a rewrite should conform tofeatured-snippet-optimizer — snippet engineering detailed in Phase 4content-freshness-decay-monitor — determines which articles need full rewrite vs refresh#seo-sop #seo #content-rewriting #content-optimization #on-page #editorial
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