Best practice for new content, but identical topic? [duplicate]

Question

I write a new blog post each year regarding the previous year's market trends. I still see users accessing some of these posts even though they are a couple of years old and outdated.

Redirecting users doesn't make sense as I still want users to have access to the previous posts. Canonical doesn't totally make sense because the content isn't identical, even though the topic is the same.

I realize search engines can recognize newer content, but is there a best practice for these kinds of pages? Should I do anything to connect the content or should I assume search engines will figure it all out without my help?

Answer 1

Why would you not move the old content to another page, add the new content to the old page and put a link from the current to old page?

If you have sufficient years and appropriate pages it may make sense to have a second page listing links and maybe a short summary to each of the old years. On each of the old years, have links to the current year page and 'the archives" summary page.

I posit that you might take a small short term knock (but probably not even), and long term it will be beneficial as there are more trusted pages with keyword rich content feeding your main page.