What to Do with Your Old Blog Posts

If you know the importance of consistent SEO content creation, chances are you’ve been running a blog for a long time, and you have a fair amount of older content on your website. To keep your site search engine optimised (SEO) and pertinent to your readers, you’ll need to consider how best to manage that content. Your best choices and course of action are likely to delete, update, reuse, redirect, or archive your older blog posts. 

To help you figure out which plan of attack is right for you, consider the following factors:

  • If your posts are rather old and feature dated content that’s no longer accurate or pertinent to potential visitors, it may be best to delete and remove that content from your website. Sometimes this can be your best move, rather than trying to rewrite the content completely. Instead, start fresh!  
  • But, if the information on your blog can be rewritten with a few tweaks here and there, you may want to update your old blogs with recent stats, resources, links, and info. This can help you lock in some good SEO points by adding new keywords into your edits to create a more robust post. Keywords will increase the value of your content for visitors—and boost your site’s overall SEO.
  • Along the same lines as updating your old blog posts, you can convert your original (but now dated) content into a new format to give it new life. For example, consider taking your old text blog posts and giving them new life as a video, infographic, podcast, white paper, or e-book. 
  • What should you do if your older posts still receive robust traffic but no longer want to have them viewable? A redirect may be the best answer for you. For example, you can retain older articles but redirect them to newer pages on your website using a 301 redirect. 
  • Create a blog archive to retain your older blog posts but make them less visible to your site visitors. Archiving older blog posts on your site allows you to keep the content—but house it in an area that may not be as easy to access for your readers. 

Why Is What You Do with Old Blog Content Important?

Retaining outdated content and information on your website can negatively impact your reputation. If visitors find old content on your site no longer relevant, the chances of them enlisting your services or purchasing your products are significantly reduced. 

Refreshing outdated material is a great way to show potential clients that you’re on top of the latest trends and info in your niche. It can also benefit your overall search engine optimization (SEO) and your site’s search engine result page rank (SERP):

Here are the main reasons why refreshing your old content is essential:

  • Google takes old content seriously. The search engine wants to ensure the audience receives the most relevant and appropriate information. 
  • New content ranks higher in SERPs. One of Google’s ranking components is tied to new content. Updating older blogs can help the search engine recognize the freshness of your material and rate your pages higher in SERP. 
  • Revamping and republishing an old post will give you all the benefits of a new one. You don’t have to create a brand-new post to reap the rewards of SEO. Instead, you can refresh older posts with new information and republish—and still see improvements in SERP.
  • Adding backlinks to updated posts can be a good SEO strategy. For a strong SEO strategy, consider building backlinks into your content updates. Strong backlinks are another way to boost your SEO and see better page rankings in SERPs. 
  • Keep your blog content original. Don’t repeat or reuse the same content across your website; do not plagiarise content. Instead, reuse your old content in new ways, like converting it to a video, infographic, or podcast. This is a great way to reuse your older content but can positively help your website’s SEO. 

Create a Content Review and Refresh Process

Four helpful ways to build a content strategy that includes auditing your existing content and refreshing or rebuilding it includes:

  1. Conduct periodic reviews: Establish a schedule for evaluating and reviewing all expired content. Depending on how much content you have and the topic you’re focused on, you may want to update weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. 
  2. Inspect your site analytics: Check your site metrics to see which blog posts receive the most pageviews and which receive the least. Make a note of out-of-date blogs that get a lot of traffic, and review the content to see if it might be a good candidate for updating and reposting. Your underperforming pages can be flagged for removal.   
  3. Verify the inbound links: Identify all links that direct to your previous posts, then assess each link’s value and relevance. Posts with valuable backlinks should be saved. Old posts with strong links should be kept, but you’ll need to utilise a competent backlink checker to discover them. It’s a smart best practice to recycle any content you can rather than delete it. Try searching for your blog with up-to-date, pertinent keywords, and note what SERPs you appear in. This can further help you decide how to manage your older blog posts.
  4. Add new information to your blog: Research your subject online to ensure a higher SERP rank. Review similar topics that your competitors are featuring on their blogs. Verify that each of your links leads to the correct blog or source. Update your links to ensure you’re directing to the most recent statistics and data. Remove any content sections that may no longer contain pertinent information and update with fresh content. It’s also good to aim for 1,500 words or more in your updated blog posts.

Turn an Old Blog Post Into Multiple New Posts

Take one of your blog posts and carefully study it. Look for anything that could be pulled out and used as the subject of a separate blog post. Any opportunity to reuse materials you already have can be hugely beneficial, especially if you can use that information and make your content pieces unique and original.

You’ll be amazed how many ideas may arise from just one blog article. Using the following techniques can help you boost your blog traffic. 

Before you get started, consider these helpful tips:

  • Increase the number of guest posts you accept and ensure each post includes a backlink.
  • Develop a social media plan that includes more postings about certain blog content to help further boost your traffic. 
  • Look online for related articles written by your competitors and get in touch with them to ask if they could link to one of your relevant blog entries. 

In addition, you increase visitor traffic to your site by trying the following:

  1. Promote updated or new content: Provide your refreshed content the same level of promotion and marketing as your new content. Your updated version will include new content, links, data, and keywords. The material will be fresh and appealing to your website visitors if intelligently rewritten.
  1. Change the content format: It is easy to build a content collection once you start blogging regularly. This is also a popular way to market your business. However, only some audience members may like consuming material this way. Not everyone enjoys reading long-form content, even if they’re interested in the subject matter.

So, why not reuse those powerful core messages to appeal to different audiences? Create infographics, podcasts, YouTube videos, or presentations to showcase your best blog material. You can further amplify your content across social media channels, leave a comment, or answer related topics on community-based sites like Quora. 

If you’ve already done the research and created new content, you’ve done the hard part. Creating other mediums through which you can carry those messages is a great way to reuse your existing content. 

  1. Write a round-up post: Once your blog has a rich library of materials, you can start creating weekly or monthly “round-up” posts on your content calendar. A round-up post showcases your top content related to a specific subject, wrapped up in a single post. 

Many readers look to these types of content collections as good resources to come back to again and again, which is why round-ups are popular for bloggers and readers alike. Round-ups allow you to drive your readers to related content and products, too. 

In addition to exposing users to more of your material, round-up posts also lower your bounce rate by enticing readers to browse more than one page on your site.  

  1. Create an e-book: Any author will tell you that writing a book from scratch consumes a lot of time, energy, and money. Unfortunately, many brands need more bandwidth to accomplish it. But you should be able to easily reuse your blog content to create an e-book. 

Gather all your blog pieces that address a related topic, such as social media advice or strategies for expanding your business. Combine them into an offer you sell or gate on your website to generate passive money. To flesh it up a little and make it as easy to read as informative as possible, include an introduction, table of contents, and conclusion.

  1. Build a list post: As you grow your content library, you may build out topics. Look for ways to organise your blog entries into pertinent topics. This can help you identify posts you can use as the foundation for several list posts that capture and link to those topics. 

There are several benefits to using internal links. Collecting related content together into one spot can help cater to readers’ specific interests and connect them quickly to info and resources they can use. By catering to your readers’ interests, providing a pertinent blogging experience, and pointing them to your prior work, you’re growing your EAT (or Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). 

You’re also compiling related material and organising it in one spot, much like you would when writing an e-book. This can also show your audience that you’re a source of knowledge on subjects important to them.

  1. Upload your blog posts again: You might be surprised to learn this, but you aren’t punished for reposting your blog content on other websites. You may get your ideas in front of a larger audience by using websites like Medium, Reddit, and LinkedIn to share your existing content.

Update On-Page SEO

Evaluate your current content strategy and business plan and confirm that your main keywords are still appropriate. Ensure you include your content titles, heading tags, and meta descriptions. 

Try using Google tools to locate keywords relevant to your content type. You can improve your ranking by updating outdated material to align with new SEO recommendations. Determine your blog articles’ core and secondary keywords and research new keywords. 

Don’t forget to check the alt tag tied to your images, too. 

Even a light SEO optimization can help your content rise in search. For example, if you already see an increase in traffic and your old blog makes its way into 10th place on Google for a particular keyword, a quick SEO update can propel you to the top of SERPs.

To start your SEO optimization update, consider trying the following tactics:

  1. Recycle URLs: You can benefit from the traffic your old blog post’s URLs provide. Publishing fresh content on top of an existing URL can help you boost the original page’s authority. The URL’s legacy rank and the backlinks routing to that page provide a foundation for your SEO optimization efforts to grow. Your actions can increase your website traffic, resulting in new, improved SEO ranks for your page.
  1. Update the heading tag with the current year: According to the latest SEO guidelines, a page’s meta title and H1 are crucial when building a blog. For example, if you’ve created a blog post that serves as a how-to manual for agile testing in 2017. The article is outdated since there have recently been significant improvements to agile testing. Give it a makeover with new alt text, updated information, fresh pictures or videos, and a new 2023 heading tag. Your makeover will help the updated blog be easier to find in search and should boost your traffic in no time.
  1. Answer FAQs: Add answers to common queries your target audience poses. Aim to be their subject matter expert and think about how to support your client’s needs as you build your content updates and map out answers to their questions. This is a good way to boost your SEO and connect more closely with readers.

Reviewing the “People commonly ask” section of a Google search for your main keyword is a fast way to identify those key questions. Answer these questions in your blog article. You can do this by adding a new section labelled with those questions or by including solutions in the main body of your article.

  1. Submit guest blog posts: There’s a sizable audience waiting to be found. Accessing the audiences of larger websites within your target market is an excellent way to promote your blog. You can expose yourself, your brand, and your company to millions of readers by contributing a guest article to a popular website. 

Creating a guest post may seem like a lot of extra effort. But websites often let you post articles that have already been published on your blog. It’s a great way to recycle your previously created content effectively and expose new audiences to your business. (Please review the submission requirements before sharing your content.)

  1. Repost evergreen content on social media: Promote your blog articles on social media. It’s improbable that your followers will see every single one of your postings on social media because of how quickly content moves across that channel. It’s not bad to post the same blog promos three or four times a month–especially if it is “evergreen content”. Evergreen content can be read anytime and isn’t tied to a particular event or date.

For new readers, this timeless knowledge will always be pertinent and helpful. So, don’t be afraid to re-promote it! A tip: To minimise repetition and test new strategies, rewrite your social media content updates or headlines before reposting.

  1. Your email and social media profiles are under your control: Some search engine traffic sources are partially or entirely outside your control. But when it comes to content marketing, you have complete control over your email list and social media profiles. You’re responsible for what, when, and how information is shared with your audience. 

Setting up autoresponders can be an excellent place to start.There’s a good chance that you’ve set up at least a simple autoresponder for any new email subscribers. That first email extends a warm greeting, and the following emails provide vital information about you and your company. 

These beneficial relationship-building messages can closely connect you with customers and offer significant opportunities that most companies overlook. Therefore, making the most of these important introductory emails is crucial, and these messages to your subscribers tend to have the most successful open rates.

  1. Delete outdated posts: Of course, some old blog articles are just too irrelevant or out-of-date to be saved. They may be related to a topic you no longer blog about, or they may no longer serve your readers. Good examples of these types of content include old giveaways or diary-style “musings” posts. These blog posts can and ought to be removed. Keeping them won’t help you or your audience in any way. Irrelevant information can hurt your site’s overall SEO and cause even the most recent blog entries to rank lower than they should. This is especially true if your blog contains a significant amount of low-quality, out-of-date content.

Making the Most of Your Blog Posts

The strategies listed above are excellent methods to increase the longevity of your content. Exploring your old blog posts and auditing their value will help you decide how best to manage them. 

You can reuse your old content in exciting new ways and improve your rankings, too!