Today let me introduce to you Nick Stamoulis, writer of SEO Journal and a Boston SEO Consultant on his guest post on this blog on a very popular topic. Nick shares with us his views on turning that old boring blog post into some more refreshing.
Check it out…
Blogs are great. They allow blog writers to share their knowledge and expertise and be viewed as a thought leader in a given niche. However, for many bloggers one of the most difficult aspects of blogging is to come up with quality content on a consistent basis. It’s important to blog regularly, but sometimes topic ideas are hard to come by. When you’re stuck and experiencing writers block it’s a good idea to revisit your previous work and turn what’s old into something new.
Here are 4 ways to update old blog posts:
Add value
Old blog posts may be dated, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be valuable. Use an old blog post as a guide and add new information to make it more relevant. As time goes on your knowledge has grown (hopefully) and maybe there is something that you once wrote about that you can now expand upon. Discuss the details that are missing from the old post. Turn a post that was once very high-level into something much more specific that provides new insights and value to the readers.
Optimize
Hopefully all bloggers understand SEO and its importance now, but maybe you didn’t a few years ago when you first started your blog, or maybe you just didn’t understand it as well as you do now. Old blog posts can still rank in the search engines. In fact, age is a big search engine trust factor and web pages that have aged tend to rank better on a search engine results page. So, why not go back and see if you can better optimize your old blog posts for the keywords that you are targeting? Incorporate keywords into the title and content naturally. Also, be sure to include an image tag using keywords if you’ve used an image in the blog post. Many people skip this step and just added a photo because it looked pretty, but it can also serve an SEO related purpose.
Follow Up
Sometimes you might not even understand why, but it’s likely that some posts just got a lot more attention and comments than others. Take a look back at those posts. Was it a hot topic at the time? What has changed since then? Discuss the old post, link to it, and include follow up information in a new post.
Promote
A great way to promote blog posts is through an opt-in email newsletter or via social media. Hopefully, if you are using social media correctly, you have increased the number of connections, fans, and followers that you have. Maybe you’ve even joined a few new networking sites in the time since you started writing your blog. It’s likely that your blog readers never scroll back to see what’s been written in the past- so show them! Promote old blog posts just as you would promote the new ones. It’s just important to make sure that the content is still relevant before using this strategy.
About the Author:
Nick Stamoulis is a Boston SEO consultant and the President and Founder of Brick Marketing. He writes SEO articles daily on his blog, Search Engine Optimization Journal. For more information please call 781-999-1222.
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi,
Your post really helped me to understand the How To Turn Old Blog Posts Into Something New. It has great details and yet it is easy to understand.
That’s what i was looking for. I will definitely share it with others.
Thanks for sharing.
Update your old blog posts, change the date if needed be. I believe it’s possible to revive an old blog site. Just keep on posting new contents and explore new things as well.
Lyn recently posted..White Strips tandblekning – Så fungerar White Stripes
Hi Lyn,
There is a lot to do about posting new content. Exploring new things may sound easy but in practice it is much harder to do it.
I never used to think of the old posts. once written, I used to forget about it. After reading this article, I got some great insights into reviving it. Will try this on my blog.
Hi Nikki,
I’m glad this post has helped you to look back into old posts you’ve written before. There is always a different angle or perspective you can write it from.
Twitter: seoadvicess
August 26, 2011 at 4:51 pm
Thank God, you just showed me a way of my problem. I just started a blog and I was very confused whether I should give a best shot of my ideas in the start to attract visitors and than a thought came into my mind may be my valuable ideas can gets buried because readers are very less. But now I know what to do
Hey Steph,
Welcome here! I think with the huge amount of blogs on the internet, it is very difficult to get people to listen to you unless you are already established or your work like crap to the top. These days its getting really hard to be successful yourself. For any aspiring entrepreneur, they should join forces instead of try to work alone because of the competitive nature of the industry. Anyway as with ideas, you need the right kind of audience to listen to you as well. And yes, old ideas can be golden too simply because you cannot think that everyone has heard of it before so you don’t need to talk about it again.
Good luck to your endeavours.
Twitter: www.thecowboymillionaires.com
September 26, 2011 at 12:28 am
Great article Nick and very helpful. I’ve started going back over my old blogs and with a little touch up, they’ve become new and more informative. I have a very successful webpage that helps others get up and running online and also helps them stay in business. I feel, helping others be successful is important to being suiccessful yourself. Thanks again for the information and keep up the great work.
Twitter: www.thecowboymillionaires.com
September 26, 2011 at 12:31 am
If you’re trying to find my webpage, please disregard the twitter account. Just click onto my name and it’ll take you where you need to go for help getting your own online business started or help in making what you already have more successful. Thank you.
It is not good to completely neglect your old blog posts. This is because of the many reasons you have given on the above post. You can also re write the post which is almost same to your point on adding value hence create a whole new article out of the old one. The tips you have shared here are all very useful.
very healpful post. I understand how to Turn Old Blog Posts Into Something New to read this post. Thanks a lot for sharing this post.