Article receiving "LOTS" of traffic - Great SE position - but it's rubbish

I have an article that is receiving a lot of traffic each day - it's on 1st page of Google for a very competitive search term- but the problem is it's rubbish, and when people visit the page they only stay for an average of 28 seconds.

Can i change the article - add to it - and improve the damn thing - or will this damage the SE position?
I want people to see quality content and this article was merely put up as site seeding content and really isn't good enough.

Thanks for any advice.

 

Changing the article would definitely have some effect on its ranking. May i suggest adding a simple link to a more "non rubbish" article that could possibly increase your visitor's time on the page and decrease your site's bounce rate.

 

This is the problem w/ crap content that ranks well. Getting people to the site is pretty much worthless if they don't find good content the provides them with what they are looking for once they click on your link.

I would leave the <title> and <h1>/<h2>s the same if at all possible... leave the URL the same if at all possible... Try to figure out what people are expecting to find at your URL based on the search phrase(s) used to get them there. If possible, leave the topic the same, but try to modify the actual text on the page so that it reads better and provides the user what they are looking for...

 

It sounds like the title might be ok if people are clicking on it in the first place, but agree with Canonical, would leave title and url the same otherwise you might lose the traffic you're getting!

Is the article relevant to the title? Do you like it? Is it interesting? If you don't think, guess what the traffic is thinking?

Also Brandon's suggestion of adding another internal link within the article itself might encourage visitors to stay a little longer perhaps.