Love Your Old Blog Posts Again

This week I have been spring cleaning my website and walking my newsletter subscribers through it too! We have done everything from changing out our profile pictures to creating new content organization with WordPress categories and tags. Today’s challenge is a bit more involved so I decided to put it on the blog and share it with you all 🙂

Many of us have been blogging for a while. As we blog, our readership grows and our new readers might not have seen the amazing content waiting for them in the archives of our sites. Refreshing your old content is a great way to get that information in front of our readers. Here are a few simple ways to love your old blog posts again:

Make Your Post SEO Optimized

Odds are, your older posts were not written with SEO optimization at the forefront of your mind, especially if you weren’t sure about who your blog was for. If you treat your existing post as a draft, you can look at your older post with a fresh mind and tweak your content by adding SEO relevant keywords in your posts. You can even optimize the title of the post without needing to redirect anything if you make sure the original permalink stays the same.

Add/update Pinterest-Ready Blog Graphic

Pinterest is a great way to drive new traffic to your site and the best way to do that is with a big, beautiful, pinnable blog graphic. If your older post did not have one before now, it is the perfect time to add one. If it did have a graphic, then revise it to match your current branding. It is a quick thing to do but will make your older content seem brand new!

Write an Update Post

Sometimes the best way to breathe new life into an older post is to write an update post around it and linking the older post. If you reviewed a product or app, you can write an update about how it is holding up. If you have a post that got a ton of comments and questions, write an update post responding back to your readers. Make sure you link back to the original post. A side benefit of this kind of internal link building is that it is also great for SEO.

Make Use of Your Categories and Tags

Categories and tags are a reader’s best friend when it comes to finding information on a blog. As you are refreshing your posts, take the time to organize them into categories and tag them with one or two relevent tags. Your reader will thank you by becoming more engaged in the content they are looking for. When I read a post that I enjoy, I almost always click on the category that it was placed into to find related articles.

Promote it on Social Media

Once you have done all the work, it is time to promote the pants off of it! Treat it like you would a new post and show it off to the world. You can schedule social media blasts, and if you have refreshed a few different posts, you could send out a email to your subscribers of all your revised posts. There is also a plugin called Revive Old Posts that allows you to set up a schedule to share your older blog content on a number of different social media outlets.

Don’t let your old content get buried back in the archives of your site. Give them a little love and let them shine for a whole new set of readers!