All bloggers have the same goals:
- Attract more audience;
- Improve Google rankings on relevant keywords;
- Become more popular on social media;
- Attract a loyal base of readers, who will read everything you publish.
To achieve these goals, bloggers are focused on one thing: producing more content. Whatever they were doing, they are trying to do more of it.
Check out: Predictions for content marketing in 2018
It’s time to shift your focus for a bit. Of course you’ll keep producing new content, but you’ll boost your blog to its full potential only when you make the old content popular again. Fortunately, it’s possible to do that if you implement the right strategies.
Edit the Content to Improve Its Readability
When you first started blogging, you were probably focused on expressing your eloquence, intelligence, and knowledge through the posts. You wanted to become an influencer, and you were probably doing that by showing off.
With time, you realized that readability was more important from eloquence. Your readers come to you not because they want to admire your intelligence, but because they want to learn something. Thus, they are looking for punchy text that’s easy to read and provides tons of information in a digestible format. Are your old posts up to that preference?
Google’s Gary Illyes tweeted a nice tip: “DYK if you read out loud the text on your page and it doesn’t sound natural, that piece of text may weigh much less during ranking.”
Does that mean that Google ranks readable content better? It might be the case. Improving the readability of your old content will help you achieve few goals:
- More social media shares
- More natural inbound links
- Increased on-page time and lower bounce rates
Edit your old content. The results are worth the effort!
Remove the Bad Links
If there are any broken links in your old content, they hurt its reputation. Whenever someone clicks such a link, it leads them to a non-existent page. Not cool. If you want to bring your old content back to life, you better improve these weak spots. Remove the bad links and add new ones, so they will lead your readers to authoritative websites.
Update the Old Posts with Fresh Information
Let’s say you follow the blog of an avid book reviewer. Such a blog certainly contains top lists with favorite books. As the blogger reads more, their preferences change, right? So we’d expect them to update this ultimate list of favorite books to read.
Go through your old posts! Think how you can freshen them up by adding new information. If something important happened and brought significant changes to the way you’d treat that topic today, it’s not necessary to write an entire new post. Just update the old one and share it away.
This is a great strategy, since it leaves your blog without useless content. Whenever the article was published, your readers will be getting relevant information. That will keep them exploring your blog and sharing your old content again and again.
Include Multimedia
You probably used photos for your old blog posts. But are they good enough? If it’s plain stock photography that looks kitschy and old, you have to replace it. You probably have a branding strategy and you use uniform images with a logo. If your old posts are not updated to that strategy, do it as soon as possible.
Don’t limit yourself to the photos. Add graphics, too. Infuse some screenshots, infographics, and even presentations. The more visual your content is, the better it looks in the eyes of a visitor.
We’re talking about multimedia here, so consider adding videos and podcasts, too. If this is an evergreen piece, you can turn it into a YouTube video with instructions. You can also provide it in the form of a podcast. Or, you can include relevant videos from YouTube that add depth to your content.
Improve Your Old Headlines
Be honest: are there any clickbaits among your old headlines? You Won’t Believe What This Guy Did With His Old Blog Content! Would you click on a headline like that? No. You want clarity. You want specific headlines that tell you what exactly you can expect, and you want the content to meet those expectations. That’s what your audience needs, too.
Clickbait headlines used to be really popular. People no longer trust them. If you brush through your old content, you might find pieces that are still good, but their headlines are not up to the preferences of today’s Internet users. Change the headlines, update the content, and you’ll bring them back to life.
This is the best way to rework old headlines:
- Infuse the keywords you’re currently targeting;
- Think of the specific phrase people use when searching for this type of content;
- Make the headline clearer and more descriptive;
- Make it emotional;
- Check how good it is with a tool like Headline Analyzer.
Refer to Your Old Pieces in Your New Content
Whenever you’re writing something new, relate it to an old post you write and link your readers there. This is great for your readers. It helps them get more information about this topic they are interested in. The strategy also helps you, since it brings visitors to your old content.
Needless to say, you have to lead them solely to relevant content. Don’t just drop purposeless links here and there. If someone clicks on such link, they will have to get value from it. Make sure to update and refresh the posts (if necessary) before linking to them.
Improve the Meta Descriptions
Your meta descriptions are part of your technical search engine optimization strategy, which is just as important as on-page and off-site SEO. You’re certainly paying attention to the meta descriptions for the new posts you’re working on. You make them snappy, clear, and inviting. But what about the meta descriptions of your old posts? Are they attractive enough for today’s readers?
There’s another reason why you should update old meta descriptions: you can add new, more relevant keywords in them. As a result, the search engine spiders will index your old content for searchers that are happening today.
If you think that updating the meta descriptions of all old blog posts is too much technical work and you don’t want to spend time on it, you can always outsource that task to a service like RushMyEssay UK. The writer will work under your instructions and make the descriptions for your old content attractive again.
Add More Keywords
You’re constantly looking for new keywords to target, right? That’s part of your blogging strategy. You’re trying to rank better on specific keywords, so why don’t you infuse them in your old content in addition to using them in the new content you produce?
Whenever you incorporate new keywords in your campaign, see if you can add them in your old blog posts. Do not stuff them, though. The keywords must seem logical and relevant to the reader. Since Google is focused on conversational keywords at the moment, infuse more of those in your evergreen posts! That will optimize your old content for voice search.
If, for example, you have an old post called 10 Ways to Dress on a Budget, you can incorporate the phrase “how to create capsule wardrobe” in the edited headline and few times throughout the content. That will certainly make a difference on the number of visits this old post attracts.
Make It Pinterest-Friendly
Pinterest is a great tool for everyone who wants to collect useful web content. You want your audience to pin your content, so they can access it later on. When they pin it, other Pinterest users will see it and click on it. They might pin it, too, so its popularity will spread across the network.
But how do you make your old content pinnable? Easy: just add Pinterest-friendly graphics throughout your articles. These should feature the headline, as well as the main points of the content.
You should include these Pinterest-friendly images in your branding campaign. You won’t be using random graphics and colors. You’ll make them uniform and recognizable, and you’ll feature the blog’s logo on all of them. Plus, you’ll be the first one to pin them in your blog’s Pinterest boards. With this approach, you’ll definitely notice a boost in your blog’s traffic.
Promote!
You can’t just make some changes and leave it to Internet users to use Google and get to those valuable pieces you once wrote. You have to freshen up your promotional strategy, so you’ll increase the clickability of old content.
Whenever you update an old post, share it on social media, so you’ll remind your followers how cool it was. Many of the new followers haven’t read that post, so it will be fully fresh for them. Don’t forget to make it easy for your readers to share the post, too. Include share buttons in the header and footer, so they can easily spread the word.
Freshen It Up!
The best thing about giving life to your old content? It’s easy! You already have the content. You just need to work on some of its element and promote it through your channels, so you’ll revive it.
