If you’ve been blogging for a while, you probably have old posts that could use some sprucing up! You may have some great content that is still relevant, yet it gets very little traffic. Perhaps the content is great, but the post “looks” stale.
Not to worry, I have posts that fall into both camps, and I use a simple checklist to refresh those old blog posts. Here are a few simple ways to breathe new life into your old posts, and get some more page views in the process.
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How to Update Old Blog Posts and Increase Your Page Views
1) Create a new image for the post. If you’re anything like me, your blog (and blogging skills) has probably evolved over time. Your blog images have most likely evolved as well. Replace an old image with a newer image.
Be sure to also set a featured image for the blog post. Even though your blog’s theme may pull in the first image in your post as the featured image, spend the ten seconds it takes to actually set this image. This way you can control the image featured when people share your blog post on social media.
[Tweet “What’s an easy way to update an old blog post? Refresh the images! #bloggingtips”]
2) Pin your new image to your Pinterest blog board and other boards as applicable. I know you have a “My Blog” board on Pinterest, right? If not, set one up! If you are a member of group boards on Pinterest, be sure to pin your new image here as well.
What’s a “My Blog” board you ask? This is the board curated with your blog posts. People will be able to follow your blog posts from Pinterest. Every blogger should have a “My Blog” board!
3) Update the internal links in your post. You can link to newer posts you’ve written to keep people on your blog longer and increase your page views.
4) Update the external links in your post. Be sure to also link to at least a couple newer, third-party links. And make sure you set them to “open in a new window” so your visitors don’t leave your site!
[Tweet “#BloggingTip Set all 3rd party links to “open in new window” so visitors do not leave your site.”]
5) Repurpose your content. For example, if your original post was all text, turn it into a video, SlideShare, or infographic. People consume content in all different ways, so give your audience options.
When sharing the repurposed content, be sure to link back to the original post. You can also embed the repurposed content into the original post too!
6) Add (or update) the click-to-tweet tweetables in your post. Make it easy for people to tweet your fabulousness. At the present time I use CoSchedule’s Click To Tweet for my tweetables. It’s a simple plugin and it’s easy to set up. And it’s free!
7) Tweak the keywords, if necessary. As I have learned what keywords are and how to define them, I go through and update keywords in older blog posts.
Has your understanding of keywords and SEO improved since you started blogging? If so, your old posts could probably benefit from a few SEO tweaks.
8) Ping your new post to the search engines. You should be doing this anyway, but you definitely want to do this for older posts. After all, you want Google (and Bing) to know you just did all this work to update your blog post.
9) Let your subscribers know you updated the post. You can create a “flashback” or “archive” section in your regular emails to your list, and include your updated post is here.
[Tweet “After updating an old blog post, be sure to promote it to your email list and on social media!”]
10) Most important of all, P-R-O-M-O-T-E! If you publish evergreen content, never stop promoting it! Share your stuff everywhere you can! You should be recycling your older (still valuable) content throughout your social media channels. When you’re sending out emails to your list, add a “blast from the past” blog post.
Rinse and repeat this checklist with your awesome, evergreen posts that you want people to find!
The point is, if you spend a TON of time crafting good, evergreen content, don’t let it go to waste. I try to go back and update at least 2-3 old blog posts each month, using the checklist outlined above. It’s a great way to expose your older content to newer members of your audience.
Ciao,
Miss Kemya
Do you update old blog posts? What kind of updates do you perform?
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