Certain restaurant menu items might come with these two words:

No substitutions

It means you either order that as-is or you don’t order it at all.

At fancier places, it might mean “We know better than you.” On the other end, it might be “Our cooks only know one way to make it.”

Perhaps it’s a special of the day or set menu—usually, the restaurant made it in bulk and you get it at a good price.

Sometimes a publication can feel a bit like a kitchen: you’re churning out articles like entrees during a lunch rush.

But your content isn’t a diner plate, slung up to the service window.

That’s especially true of technical content, which might need updates to keep up with technology changes. You can also refresh your older content to come in line with your most recent content strategy.

For example, you might have a new product or feature that unlocks use cases not possible before. You could likely update several pages to reference the functionality.

Or suppose you have several short articles about a similar topic. Excerpt and combine them into a deeper guide, then interlink the new guide with the original articles. Together, this new content will help more developers.

Remove “no substitutions” from your menu and see how you can make existing content more strategic.

P.S. Interested in doing this yourself? Now is a great time to consider three ways to increase traffic without new content