The folks over at Social Media Examiner recently asked 1,300+ bloggers if updating older articles is part of their strategy. Fifty-five percent said yes.
I personally make it part of my strategy to always revisit my older content.
Here’s a couple of reasons why you want to think about updating old blog posts:
Your older content already has some SEO juice to it…meaning that it has traffic and may already have links to it from other sites. Maybe all it needs is some TLC from you to help it rank higher and drive more blog traffic.
It’s faster and easier to update an old blog post than it is to write a completely new one.
If you are recirculating your content out on social media which I highly recommend, then it is your job to keep your content up to date.
Wondering where to start? I suggest that you start by looking at your top posts that are driving the most traffic. Pay attention to content that is over 6 months old.
You can use Google Analytics to figure out what is your highest traffic content and make a list.
9 Ideas for Updating Old Blog Posts
1. Change the post date
This option is best if your blog has grown a lot over time. Refreshing the content will improve search engine optimization. to last updated post, that way you are telling your readers that your content is up to date and fresher
If your blog post seems outdated (like a guide you initially wrote 3 to 5 years back), you might want to consider republishing an entirely new update guide. I am in the process of doing this for my 7 ways to make money with your site guide since I want to share new information on list building that is working.
I’ll bet that you most likely have evolved in your business and have new improved ways of teaching or methods that you want to include in some of your older content.
This time make your older blog post evergreen, by not including dates. As long as they keep it updated with new information. Doing this will save you a lot of unnecessary work plus, it’ll stay relevant in search engine optimization results.
2. Clean up Your Content
Review and clean up old links Use a chrome extension like Link Miner to spot and clean up any broken links.
Look through your content and see if you have any statistics mentioned on your page. If they are old then you’ll want to update those statistics.
3. Add More Sections to Your Content
One great way to this is to look at what questions are being asked on the subject. I recommend using ask the public.com or Quora.
4. Add Links to Relevant Content
When possible you should consider adding links to related content on your website or to external websites.
Adding links to your posts: Want more SEO juice for your content? Then make linking building to your other related content is something you want to do. Before you finish a new post, from this point on, make sure to take extra time to refer to the list of important old posts.
if you have the premium version of Yoast SEO it will automatically come up with a big list of content suggestions for internal link building for you.
As you do this over time, you start to see a pattern with your link building. Meaning that you’ll start to create anchor text links to the same old posts over and over. In fact, you’ll probably end up linking to your best posts that go deep into the most popular topics on your blog.
Adding links to other websites: I like to do this when giving examples, writing a roundup post or quoting statistics on in my posts.
5. Add Infographics
If you are looking to make your updated blog post stand out, then you want to consider creating an infographic.
Infographics are a great way to visually communicate information or a process. They are a mix of writing and visuals that take complex information and make it easier to digest.
Reasons why you might want to consider adding an infographic:
1. They are easily scanned and viewed.
2. They are visually interesting and will capture your readers’ interest.
3. Have the potential to go viral – people love to share infographics.
4. They are embeddable making it possible for others to embed and create backlinks to your blog post (good for SEO).
5. Create brand awareness – adding your logo to your infographic.
6. Drive more traffic to your blog post.
Infographics take time and thought to create. My suggestion is to create them for cornerstone content or content that is already generating traffic rather than wasting your time and effort creating them for posts that have a lower chance of getting traction.
6. Add Video
There are 2 ways you can add video to your blog posts:
1. Create your own video – look through your content and start with your best content and create a video for it. Chances are that if it is getting traffic on your blog, it will be popular over on YouTube as well. I suggest starting by looking over on YouTube at popular videos similar to what you want to create for inspiration.
2. Add someone else’s video – just head on over to YouTube and search for a popular video to embed in your blog post. Yes, you can do that, and this is much faster than creating your own video!
I highly suggest that you get into the habit of doing at least one video post a month and also doing another couple of videos for your hottest content on your blog to get more traffic and exposure for your business.
You can even do a Facebook Live then download it and put it on YouTube!
7. Update Your Featured Image
If you are like me, your blog look and feel has changed over the years. Most likely you have some older photos that could use a new look.
Especially if you have evergreen content that you are sharing out on social media, you’ll want to take a look at your images and spiff them up if they are 2-3+ years old. Here are the top 6 images you should be using for your blog posts.
8. Add a Content Upgrade
This is one of the best ways I know to grow your list faster.
You can create a content upgrade quickly using any of these methods:
1. You can create a checklist or a how-to tutorial from scratch that walks your reader through how to put your content to use in their business.
2. You can have more content that goes deeper from your blog post..not my favorite as I like to give my content away without having to make people opt-in to read more
3. You can quickly make a pdf of your article using Print Friendly & Pdf chrome extension from your article. This is a super smart and fast way to create a content upgrade without too much hassle or extra work.
My personal favorite is to make a Pdf, create a cover and then set up the content upgrade just like I did here in this blog post. Here’s how to easily make a pdf from your blog post. Or you can get more ideas here: 21+ enticing content upgrade ideas.
9. Perform On Page SEO
You’ll want to revisit your keywords for your blog post to see if what you originally still makes sense. You want to make sure that there are a significant amount of people searching for the term and if you already have good traffic to your post, I would skip this step.
If you haven’t already done any on-page SEO here’s a quick primer and you can get my 10 minute SEO tutorial here
1. Make sure that the keyword or phrase appears in the title, once or twice in the article and once or twice in sub-headlines.
2. Rewrite-write the meta description and title (make it more enticing) to increase your traffic and click-through-rate. Doing this will give you more organic traffic and help you rank higher for your keyword.
3. Add your keyword to your featured image file name before uploading it and also to the alt text and description.
Here’s my in-depth article on SEO Basics: how to optimize your blog post in 10 minutes or less
My hope is that this post has helped you realize how important your old blog posts are and you see the value in updating old blog posts.
Your old blog posts most likely represent a large amount of your content and attract a fair amount of traffic to your site when written and marketed correctly.
Updating your old blog posts is something you’ll want to add to your content plan.
