How to Keep Old Blog Posts Relevant

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It’s finally that time of year- there’s a cool breeze in the air, the trees are starting to change, you start to freshen up your fall wardrobe, maybe make a visit to Target or Home Goods to purchase ALL the decorative fall and Halloween decor (or wait, is that just me?!)

Just like your wardrobe and home decor, your blog posts could use a freshening up every now and again! After all, you don’t want people reading your blog post only once before it ends up in the blog post graveyard, never to be seen again. Sprucing up old blog content is key to maintaining your site’s relevancy and visibility over time. Think about it this way- a new visitor comes across your most recent blog post and likes it, so they might poke through older blog posts, too. So, it’s important to update and maintain the quality of those older posts from months or even years ago.

Before you dive into updating your blog, do a quick inventory check of your blog content. Go through all of your old posts and figure out how each one benefits your business and future goals.

Strategically plan on which blog posts you will focus your refreshing efforts. For example, some posts may be more shareable, have higher conversion rates, or resonate with your visitors more – this includes time spent on a page, bounce rate, etc. So, you will want to focus on posts with higher engagement before posts that didn’t drive as great of an audience.

Refreshing your old blog posts involves optimizing them to increase the amount of traffic they receive and refreshing the content so that it remains relevant and factually accurate. In fact, Hubspot was able to triple their leads using this exact same tactic! Additionally, freshening up your blog posts can improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) since it updates the date of your post on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s).

Five Tips to Freshen-Up Old Blog Posts

  • Re-Edit Your Content: Select old blog topics and give them a facelift! Update and add keywords that are high-ranking on Google. Keep in mind though, depending on how much editing you do, it could result in an entirely new post. If this is a direction you’d rather take, link back to the older post in order to avoid duplicate content – duplicate content pages can hurt your search ranking on Google. Re-editing your existing content doesn’t necessarily involve coming up with brand new ideas or adding to your blog posts’ word count. Even small changes can deliver huge results!
  • Update Content to Make It Current: Especially in certain fast-paced fields, things that were true a couple of years ago may no longer be relevant or may be outdated theory-wise. You will want to be sure you are replacing content that refers to old platforms, theories, practices, or concepts, and replacing it with the most recent information to make your blog post more useful to visitors. Readers are more likely to share your posts on social media and other channels if they think you are an expert in your field or see you as a relevant thought leader in a certain area.
  • Add, Update or Replace Visuals: By adding more or replacing old visual content, you are making the blog post more interesting and increasing the time someone spends on the page, which will have a positive impact on your search rankings. It’s always good to add quality images by changing out your featured image for example, (here at SocialKNX we love Unsplash and RawPixel!) Depending on what your content is, you may want to consider other engaging pieces of content such as videos, infographics or even polls. Finally, everyone loves gifs! Not only are gifs entertaining, but they can help you demonstrate a point easier and more clearly as well.
  • Duplicate Content in a New Form: If you have the ability, consider creating video content on the same or a similar topic to an old blog post, then republish it as a new post. Just be sure that your video is relevant, clear, and helpful to your audience. Video content is proven to draw attention and interest faster and longer than written content. Be sure to capture the attention of your audience with a good HOOK. We all know the attention span of online browsers is short, so make sure your audience stays interested throughout your entire video. Also, make sure you are not limiting your audience – include subtitles and transcripts for each video!
  • Add Influencers Into the Mix: To help spread your refreshed blog post content even more, enlist the help of influencers! You can do this in a variety of ways- reaching out to them directly, tagging them when you share your updated blog post on social media are just a couple of examples. This can even create a potential partnership and expand your audience to include the influencer’s followers as well. Be sure to check out our blog post on How to Employ Influencers in Your 2020 Marketing Mix too for some ideas!

Refreshing your blog posts can go a long way with your SEO efforts and keeping your content at the forefront of not only your regular visitor but new visitors’ minds as well!

Here as SocialKNX, our team of digital marketers can help you both create and refresh blog post content! We LOVE coming up with keywords and optimizing your content to maximize your exposure on the web. Contact us today to see how we can help you!