If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you undoubtedly have a collection of older posts that might not be so relevant to your audience any longer. Especially if your business is technology related, that can happen very quickly. We all know how fast technology becomes obsolete.
The general rule of thumb however, is to never delete old content all together. It’s been crawled and indexed by search engines, you may have some links out there that still point to it, so deleting it can often leave your site with too many 404 errors that will not please the Google Gods.
So how do you breathe new life in to old posts?
It can seem like a tedious task, but repurposing old content is a great way to get more mileage out of your existing content. Here are a few ways that I leverage my older content.
- Update old posts to reflect newer technologies, strategies or methods. For example, I recently updated an older post about using Google Alerts for ways to come up with content ideas. I originally wrote the post way back in 2010, and even though the technique is still relevant and widely used, the post itself was not getting any more traction. Since I have changed many of my marketing techniques, and really define my niche and target audience, I rewrote portions of the post to speak directly to them, as well as added a few new graphics to make the post more appealing.
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Edit the published date of the post to a new date and time in the future so that the post will now appear in your more recent feed, instead of buried 15 pages back, which was the case in this instance.
To do this in WordPress, simply click the Edit link below the date that the post was originally published. You can now change the date and time and your post will republish on the new date and time.
Note: If you are using a plugin that automatically shares new blog posts to your social media platforms, this option may not be available, as the post has already been published.
- Repurpose old content into video or slide shares. People do love video and many prefer watching video over reading. Record a video with the same content (update as needed), but actually talk to your audience as if they’re in the room. You will better connect with them, as well as give them a new and updated perspective on the information.
Check out this post by Social Media Examiner detailing 19 tools to create more content. This in-depth article will give you plenty of ideas on how to repurpose old content, as well as come up with new content.
- Create a “Best of” or “Round-up” type of post. If your older posts are still relevant, and you just need another way to get them back in front of your audience, gathering them all together in one new post is a great way to feature the best of what you’ve written and provide great value all at once for your readers. An added bonus is this also is a way to add internal links on your website, a valuable SEO tool that is under utilized by most web site owners.
- Turn a “List” post into a new series of posts. List posts are popular….people love to see things broken down into little bite-sized chunks they can easily digest and implement. We’ve all seen them…. here are a few of mine:
- 5 Reasons Why Your Farm or Ranch Needs a Website
- The Top 3 Reasons Why Not Having a Mobile-Friendly Website is Hurting Your Business
- 50 Creative Blog Post Ideas to Inspire You
- 10 Things to Ponder Before Creating a New Website
The idea is to break down each of these line items and flesh them out to create new, more in-depth pieces that will provide your readers with more information and give you more SEO traction at the same time.
Coming up with new website content can be a very time consuming and daunting task, but there are ways to simplify things and make them easier. Repurposing your old blog posts into new, fresh content is just one way to keep with our content marketing and keep providing new information to our followers.
