You wrote it years ago. It did well at the time. People liked it …they clicked, opened, commented and shared it. But now it’s summer 17′ and your readers moved on. You never looked back. But maybe it’s time to revisit those old articles.
Maybe it’s time to update old blog posts and republish them. Maybe bringing old articles up to date is the best move we can make as content marketers.
The posts I’m most likely to update are any old posts that are getting constant traffic either from search engines, referral traffic from other sites or social media. I particularly pay attention to search traffic as I find a lot of our oldest posts continue to send a lot of traffic.
Start With Your Most Popular Posts
Let the numbers guide you to this decision. Don’t base it on your gut, or even reactions you’ve seen. While you can throw some weight to posts that received great social engagement, Google Analytics is going to give you a clear directions on which posts to start with. Whichever posts you have that gain the most traffic is where you will want to start.
Seasonal Posts
Use your calendar – Which seasons or events are upcoming that you may have covered in an old post? The NBA Finals just wrapped up, did you write something a few years back that may have some relevance today about that?
Use upcoming holidays or recognized dates too, like the start of Hurricane Season, Tax Day, or the beginning of the hot Florida summer. Put all of these things together and you should be able to create a flow or schedule to plan out the order in which you’ll update your old blog posts.
Update the Information & Lengthen Your Post
You’ve probably learned a lot since the first posts you published. Utilize that knowledge by going through old posts and adding new information. Lengthen them (Google loves longer, highly relevant and useful posts!) and add up-to-date info.
Perhaps you talked about a plugin that is no longer active or a product that is now outdated — whatever it may be, seek to add current, useful info to your old content if you want to increase blog traffic.
Proofread for Mistakes & Dead Links
If you need to know one thing about SEO, it’s this: search engines are always on the hunt for the BEST content out there. Therefore, if a post has spelling errors or links that don’t work, you’ll lose some street cred in Google searches.
Use a spell checker on old posts and read through them for obvious errors.
Also, use a plugin like Broken Link Checker to find any broken links on your site. Then, of course, fix them!
Broken links are not only bad for user experience but can also be harmful to your site’s loving relationship with Google, i.e. your SEO.
Update Your Images
If the images in your post are showing their age, or your lack of photography skills at that time, update them.
If you were using cheesy stock images, or images you don’t have permission to use, change them out.
Make sure you also rename the image to make it relevant and search engine friendly.
Did you know that 93% of the most popular social media updates include images. I’m sure you’re already including images in your Facebook updates and obviously on Instagram, but did you know you can include images in your tweets? Make sure you’re including a great, eye-catching photo for your posts Featured Image and on social media.
Statistics overwhelmingly show that tweets and posts with images are much more likely to be clicked on if they are appealing to the eye.
An image is worth 1,000 words. A relevant image will encourage readers to read and share the post on their favorite social media platforms.
Interlinking
Interlinking is when you place relevant links to your published blog posts within your post.
I love interlinking because it’s a great way to put eyes on your other relevant blog posts. It’s also a great way to keep readers on your blog.
To top it off, interlinking is also good for SEO.
Maybe you wrote that post about Twitter in 2010 and since then, you’ve written about Twitter three more times. Link to those later blog posts! If you can’t find a way to work links into the body of the post, just tuck them into a P.S.
Even if you use a ‘related post’ plugin, P.S.’s can be really effective. People get ‘blind’ to those plugins and they don’t show up in RSS feeds where most people read blogs.
Add Keywords
Keywords are incredibly important for SEO. A keyword is essentially the specific topic of your post, or what someone might type into Google to find it. The takeaway here is that your post should mention your keyword several times within your content in order to rank highly in search engines and increase blog traffic.
For example, if you wrote a post called, “10 Ways to Start Video Marketing on a Budget,” your keyword or phrase might be “video marketing on a budget,” as this is something one might search for on Google. By the way, the word “video” isn’t a good keyword, since it’s not specific enough — you would be competing with an endless amount of other blogs.
If your key phrase is “video marketing on a budget,” then you should incorporate this phrase into your post’s content several times.
Rework Old Titles to be More SEO Friendly
While they may be cute, titles like “Recent Posts” or “A Few Fun Tips for Your Weekend” will not help your search engine rankings. They also won’t help you get more clicks via social media. The title of your post is one of the most important parts of its SEO friendliness, so if you want to rank higher in search engines, it’s important to use titles that include your keywords and sound interesting enough to click.
The best way to rework titles? Try to think of the exact phrases someone would search for in order to find your post and include them in your title. I also like to search my title headlines against Google search to see if anyone else has the exact same title. You want your titles to be as unique as possible.
Conclusion
As time goes on, and the internet grows, so too must your blog posts. Maybe your views have changed, maybe there’s been some new tech that has come out since then. Whatever the reasons, updating your blog posts periodically is a must.
Plus, it gives you a chance to re-share articles on social media to bring more traffic back to your website. And, if you’re linking outbound to another website in a blog post, paste a link on their Facebook page telling them how much you love them and that you’re talking about them. @mention them. Send them a real, live email. Maybe you’ll make a new internet friend! Maybe they’ll share the post! They won’t be able to share it if they don’t know about it.
Cheers!
You wrote it years ago. It did well at the time. People liked it …they clicked, opened, commented and shared it. But now it’s summer 17′ and your readers moved on. You never looked back. But maybe it’s time to revisit those old articles.
Maybe it’s time to update old blog posts and republish them. Maybe bringing old articles up to date is the best move we can make as content marketers.
The posts I’m most likely to update are any old posts that are getting constant traffic either from search engines, referral traffic from other sites or social media. I particularly pay attention to search traffic as I find a lot of our oldest posts continue to send a lot of traffic.
Start With Your Most Popular Posts
Let the numbers guide you to this decision. Don’t base it on your gut, or even reactions you’ve seen. While you can throw some weight to posts that received great social engagement, Google Analytics is going to give you a clear directions on which posts to start with. Whichever posts you have that gain the most traffic is where you will want to start.
Seasonal Posts
Use your calendar – Which seasons or events are upcoming that you may have covered in an old post? The NBA Finals just wrapped up, did you write something a few years back that may have some relevance today about that?
Use upcoming holidays or recognized dates too, like the start of Hurricane Season, Tax Day, or the beginning of the hot Florida summer. Put all of these things together and you should be able to create a flow or schedule to plan out the order in which you’ll update your old blog posts.
Update the Information & Lengthen Your Post
You’ve probably learned a lot since the first posts you published. Utilize that knowledge by going through old posts and adding new information. Lengthen them (Google loves longer, highly relevant and useful posts!) and add up-to-date info.
Perhaps you talked about a plugin that is no longer active or a product that is now outdated — whatever it may be, seek to add current, useful info to your old content if you want to increase blog traffic.
Proofread for Mistakes & Dead Links
If you need to know one thing about SEO, it’s this: search engines are always on the hunt for the BEST content out there. Therefore, if a post has spelling errors or links that don’t work, you’ll lose some street cred in Google searches.
Use a spell checker on old posts and read through them for obvious errors.
Also, use a plugin like Broken Link Checker to find any broken links on your site. Then, of course, fix them!
Broken links are not only bad for user experience but can also be harmful to your site’s loving relationship with Google, i.e. your SEO.
Update Your Images
If the images in your post are showing their age, or your lack of photography skills at that time, update them.
If you were using cheesy stock images, or images you don’t have permission to use, change them out.
Make sure you also rename the image to make it relevant and search engine friendly.
Did you know that 93% of the most popular social media updates include images. I’m sure you’re already including images in your Facebook updates and obviously on Instagram, but did you know you can include images in your tweets? Make sure you’re including a great, eye-catching photo for your posts Featured Image and on social media.
Statistics overwhelmingly show that tweets and posts with images are much more likely to be clicked on if they are appealing to the eye.
An image is worth 1,000 words. A relevant image will encourage readers to read and share the post on their favorite social media platforms.
Interlinking
Interlinking is when you place relevant links to your published blog posts within your post.
I love interlinking because it’s a great way to put eyes on your other relevant blog posts. It’s also a great way to keep readers on your blog.
To top it off, interlinking is also good for SEO.
Maybe you wrote that post about Twitter in 2010 and since then, you’ve written about Twitter three more times. Link to those later blog posts! If you can’t find a way to work links into the body of the post, just tuck them into a P.S.
Even if you use a ‘related post’ plugin, P.S.’s can be really effective. People get ‘blind’ to those plugins and they don’t show up in RSS feeds where most people read blogs.
Add Keywords
Keywords are incredibly important for SEO. A keyword is essentially the specific topic of your post, or what someone might type into Google to find it. The takeaway here is that your post should mention your keyword several times within your content in order to rank highly in search engines and increase blog traffic.
For example, if you wrote a post called, “10 Ways to Start Video Marketing on a Budget,” your keyword or phrase might be “video marketing on a budget,” as this is something one might search for on Google. By the way, the word “video” isn’t a good keyword, since it’s not specific enough — you would be competing with an endless amount of other blogs.
If your key phrase is “video marketing on a budget,” then you should incorporate this phrase into your post’s content several times.
Rework Old Titles to be More SEO Friendly
While they may be cute, titles like “Recent Posts” or “A Few Fun Tips for Your Weekend” will not help your search engine rankings. They also won’t help you get more clicks via social media. The title of your post is one of the most important parts of its SEO friendliness, so if you want to rank higher in search engines, it’s important to use titles that include your keywords and sound interesting enough to click.
The best way to rework titles? Try to think of the exact phrases someone would search for in order to find your post and include them in your title. I also like to search my title headlines against Google search to see if anyone else has the exact same title. You want your titles to be as unique as possible.
Conclusion
As time goes on, and the internet grows, so too must your blog posts. Maybe your views have changed, maybe there’s been some new tech that has come out since then. Whatever the reasons, updating your blog posts periodically is a must.
Plus, it gives you a chance to re-share articles on social media to bring more traffic back to your website. And, if you’re linking outbound to another website in a blog post, paste a link on their Facebook page telling them how much you love them and that you’re talking about them. @mention them. Send them a real, live email. Maybe you’ll make a new internet friend! Maybe they’ll share the post! They won’t be able to share it if they don’t know about it.
Cheers!