Much like anything in the world of SEO and
digital marketing, a blog post is never ‘finished’. Even those that may have
lived on your website for years can still be subject to change. Think of those
posts like dormant volcanoes, only ones that you want to erupt!
In this article, we’re going to share some
tips on how to breathe life back into old blog posts and get more out of them!
1. Refresh your keywords
You can start by doing a little keyword
research and identifying how the search terms relating to your blog post
subject matter may have evolved over the months or years since you first
published it; are they still relevant?
These insights can help you refresh your
keywords and alter the content to make it a little more relevant for today.
2. Update your misleading/unclear headlines
While it doesn’t hurt to write the
occasional ‘mysterious’ blog title to attract readers into your blog, it can
negatively impact your rankings. The fact is, when Google is looking to rank
information, they’re looking for blogs that are concise, with titles that are
clearly defined.
Put your keywords in your titles, keep
them clear, and cut the fat. Let people (and Google) know exactly what’s
entailed.
The same applies to writing unclear
headlines for the sake of taking artistic/poetic liberties; while the title
may well read beautifully if it doesn’t clearly inform the reader or Google on
what the blog is about, you’re wasting a lot of opportunity to maximize your
traffic.
3. Add new, relevant
information
Unless a blog post is evergreen, there’s almost always an opportunity to add new and relevant information to old blog posts. For example,
if you wrote an article about how to get the best results for local SEO in
Singapore several years ago, there are likely to be new metrics and tips
that can add even more value to the post today!
4. Connect new and old
posts with intuitive internal linking
Whenever you are writing new content, you
should always try to look for opportunities to create internal links to
previous blog posts. For example:
● In this blog post, when
writing about “updating headlines” you could link to a previous blog post on
how to write engaging headlines.
● Similarly, when talking
about “refreshing keywords” you could link to a blog post on how to conduct
proper keyword research.
Creating a solid internal linking
structure not only improves the overall user experience, but it can increase
traffic (Google loves ranking websites with solid internal linking), and get
more eyes on your older content.
5. Repurpose and share on
social media
Just because you have already posted a
blog on social media when it was first written, it doesn’t mean that you should
neglect it forever. You can create a social media sharing schedule and
repurpose old blogs for your latest followers on Twitter, Facebook, and
Instagram to consume.
Final thoughts
As you can see, a blog is never finished!
You should make a habit of frequently going over old blog posts and bringing
them up to date in terms of content relevancy, SEO accuracy and quality.
Commit to this and you can make your old content even more valuable!
