Recycle Your Old Blog Posts
Everyone who has been writing in a blog for some period of time probably has some blog posts from way back that are a bit outdate, sloppy or just plain boring. There is good news though because there are some things you can do to those pesky old blog posts to pump some vital life back into them so they can serve some sort of purpose on your blog.
Here are some helpful recommendations to consider about how to recycle your old blog posts:
Re-Optimize
Go back and locate some of those old blog posts that might have not been optimized like they should and tweak them out. Maybe you have an older blog and some important search engine optimization efforts were not in the limelight yet so now you can go back and apply some of those techniques to your current search engine marketing efforts. Adjust paragraphs, add images and tweak titles if the post is clearly not ranking anywhere and you will get some nice new energy out of them.
Social Media
Maybe you have a few really great older blog posts that receive some good search engine attention on their own. Take those older stronger blog posts and slowly re-funnel them through your social networks and try to get a little more out of them. Your social networks are probably much larger than they were when you wrote those posts and there is a good possibility your audience might respond very well to them now.
Add Content
Possibly they haven’t received the attention they deserve due to a lack of content. Try adding some new content to your older blog posts that have been hovering under the radar. Add a video or even extend that list if some of your older posts that might have been set up as lists identifying a specific area of your industry.
Older blog posts have a huge advantage in the search engines because they are sitting on nicely aged domains. Sometimes they just need a little bit of attention so they can start moving around a bit. Try lighting a fire under them in some sort of way and you will see the posts rejuvenate.
9 Responses to “Recycle Your Old Blog Posts”
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I’ve done this and it works wonders, especially the popular posts. I like the idea of applying new seo techniques that were not effective in the past but are now.
Hi Dan,
Thanks for reading and your comment! Recycling old blog posts is a great time saver too!
Thanks again & take care,
Nick
Reduce, re-use, recycle
Anything that saves time doing seo is a good thing.
This is great Nick, thanks for the tips! It’s really important to make time to re-optimize older blog posts because – as you mentioned – those factors that are important in SEO now may not have been at the time you wrote it. SEO’s always changing, and it’s great!
Another way to breathe some new life into those old blog posts is to draft a “this time last year/2 years ago” post, or some similar theme that highlights what was pertinent to your readers around that time, or posts that got the most attention a year ago. You can list out and link to 3-5 of your old blog posts (after you’ve re-optimized them with all the tips you mention) and make parallel comparisons when it comes to what is of interest to your readers now.
Hi Sandra,
Great advice! Thanks for sharing these good blog recycling tips too!
Take Care,
Nick
So many bloggers seem to give up on old posts. Great to see someone reminding everyone: Old content isn’t dead content.
Im spending a day working on the website today – and refreshing my old blogs will definitely be on the agenda. Adding links to the pages and maybe adjusting some of the wording. Thanks
Hi Ian,
Thanks for your comment…old blog posts and content is not dead content…
Take Care,
Nick
Hi Catherine,
Thanks for checking in, it is always to a best practice not only to reuse older content but to rework it to help improve conversions, etc. for your website.
Thanks & take care!
Nick
Keep in mind too that when recycling your old posts you should check for broken links to pages that may not exist anymore.