Search engines love valuable and fresh content. However, it might not be possible to add new content so frequently. There can be a moment when you need to look back in your repository of blog posts and update them with fresh content. In this journal entry, we will be looking on “How to Revive Old Blog Posts?”
There should be some existing posts on your website which were popular or even are till date. Updating these posts can bring them a new life, and as a result, you will see an increase in the traffic, social shares, and this can even increase your revenue.
Now, the main question that arises is, which posts need an update and why am I gonna update them. Well here are some quick and helpful tips for giving your older posts a new life.
Why Am I Gonna Revive Old Blog Posts
Many bloggers prefer to write new content and forget to update their old and most read blog posts. This approach might be totally wrong. Here are some of the reasons why you should update your old blog posts.
- You may have changed your mind after writing your post contents for some specific topics. If that is the case, then you need to update the old content with your new ideas.
- There is a possibility that your old posts may contain the outdated information. In that case also you must replace the old information with the new one to keep your blog up-to-date.
- Webpage design trend changes constantly. You should update your old posts for a better design that goes well of with the current trend.
- Both Search engines and your genuine readers always prefer the fresh content. If you update your old blog posts and re-publish them with the new date, it might get a chance to show up again in the search engine results page. This will help in the increase of your blog readers and effectively increases the CTR.
Which Posts Need an Update
You have to keep in mind that not all of the old blog posts are worth updating. Some really need an update for the outdated information in the post that your visitors think are valuable. The up-to-date posts shows your concern with the content and the viewership. Updating is always good method to increase your website traffic by always engaging your users with the up-to-date content. Besides, it is a good method to increase your website traffic.
You should try to find the following types of posts first which needs an update:
- Posts with the highest traffic – The posts with the highest traffic make up for your online success, updating them with new information makes sure that you keep the edge in the competition.
- Posts with the most shares – Posts which were very popular in the past and making a small tweak in them can give them a new life. You can make use of tools like buzzsumo to find such type of posts.
- Seasonal posts – Posts like “Best Programming languages of 2016” are not worth it while the readers are looking for the best programming languages in 2017.
- Posts with the potential to succeed – Making improvements to the posts that appear at the last of the first page or on the second page of the search results page can bring the opportunity to surpass your competitors.
For the last type of posts, you can use SEMRush to locate them. In the “Top Organic Keywords” report, you are able to find out the posts that rank 6-15 easily.
How to Update the Old Blog Posts
Changing “2016” to “2017” could be an easy task, but some posts need more efforts if you really want to revive them. Some of the suggestions and tricks that really can help.
#Replacing the outdated information with the latest
If your blog concentrates on tutorials, you should always update the screenshots of an older version of the software introduced in the tutorial. While replacing the screenshots, you may also need to update the steps, or introduce the new features.
#Add a major update
The posts which have not much of an outdated information, you can go ahead and add extra paragraphs to update your readers about your recent research on the topic. The newly added content makes it easier for your old posts to be re-crawled by search engines.
#Provide better visual content
For those posts that target the traffic from social networks, it is necessary for you to provide more appealing visual content. Therefore, remember to replace the low-quality images with high-resolution ones. If you want to make an infographic for a great post, then refer to this tutorial.
#Improve the SEO
You should also keep in mind that updating the content doesn’t really mean that the posts have been updated. You should also be updating the SEO elements, this will help in making the posts rank higher on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). You should always make sure that the primary keyword is included in the post title, meta title, meta description, and the main content. Images if used in the posts should have a proper alt tag.
The internal linking is also something you are able to improve. It is probable that you have produced more relevant content after a post was published, so read through the post and add internal links to the newer content.
If you need more tricks, you should learn about on-page SEO.
#Check the grammar and spelling errors
It is important to always proofread your blog posts. Looking at the posts written last year or last few months, you might sometimes still find silly mistakes related to grammar or spelling. When updating your old post, you can go through the whole content to figure out whether the article is error-free or not.
#Break up the old content
Sometimes the old posts seems to be too long to read. It might be a good option to break down the content so that its easier for your readers to read the article. Effective ways of breaking the post are either converting the blog post in parts 2 or 3. In a single blog post, you can use different headings, insert images in between the content, and try to make your paragraphs shorter which are no more than 5 sentences.
What to Do After Updating the Blog Posts
Once you are done with the content update, the task doesn’t end there. In order to let your visitors / readers know that the posts now include updated and latest information and gain more traffic, you still need to do the following:
- Reset the publishing date – Resetting the publishing date to the day when you updated the post seems to be the easiest way to tell that the post contains fresh content.
- Display the date of the last update – If you really don’t like to reset the date, then you can go ahead and display the last update date next to the author name. This step might require your coding skills. If you are not a coder then you might find ready-to-use code snippets easily.
- Promote the posts – there are multiple ways to promote your old posts after updating them, for example, sending them to the email subscribers, or sharing them to your facebook or twitter account.