Going back through your old blog posts can be like walking through a graveyard. It’s an eerily quiet and deserted wasteland of forgotten words and ideas.
If you’ve been blogging a while you undoubtedly have old content that is sitting on your website gathering dust. You probably wrote it when you were just starting out and, although it’s great stuff, your writing has grown and developed. It’s time to show those old blog posts some love; to clear the cobwebs and bring them back from the dead.
Consider this. When you first started you had zero subscribers and followers. We all start from square one. Additionally, you may not have been adept at optimizing your content and sharing your message. It’s no wonder no one has seen those first few articles you wrote. Over time, you have probably gotten better at SEO and social media marketing. Now that you know what you’re doing, you can go back and fix the issues with your older content and repurpose it for your growing audience.
There are some frighteningly good ways to revive your old content and bring it back to life.
Table of Contents
10 Ways To Bring Old Content Back From The Dead
1. Pick Out The Best Parts And Share
Don’t let the hours you put into writing your articles go to waste. There are some relevant and helpful pieces of advice and research in them. Use social media to share quotes or stats from those old posts. Pick out the best parts and share them on your social channels, linking to your post. This will help generate new interest in older content.
2. Update Your Branding On Older Posts
Has your branding changed since you first launched your website? Chances are your site has evolved. Did your older content get a facelift too? If not, it’s time to make sure your original blog content gets its fair share of attention by adding a few updates that will make it consistent with your new branding.
3. Spruce Up Your Images
Take a look at the images you used in your older posts. Are they compelling? Will they grab readers’ attention? Are they optimized with alt tags? Are they the right size to share on the social channels you are using? If not, create better images and optimize them. Then share the article again on your social channels. Canva is an easy-to-use tool to help you create awesome on-brand images.
4. Add Visual Content
Perhaps your older articles don’t contain any visual components. Consider adding visuals like videos, Google web stories, or infographics. Visual content that’s easy to share will extend the reach of your content. Need some tools for creating awesome images that will increase engagement? Check out our article here.
5. Add Keywords
If your article was well-written and on-point for your target audience but didn’t get any traction when it was initially posted, it could be because it wasn’t optimized for search engines. Go back through it and edit the title and body of the article to include long-tail keywords. Our favorite tool for optimizing content is Frase.
Not sure what keywords to use? Check out our Keyword Research Template.
6. Link Related Posts
Over time you may have expanded upon or written articles about similar topics. Go back to your original articles on the subject and add links to your related posts. Also, add links to older articles on your newer posts. By doing this you’re adding value, saving the reader the time it would take to search your site for additional information on the subject, and keeping the reader on your site longer which will be viewed favorably by search engines.
7. Target The Right Audience
When you first started writing, you may not have defined your target niche. Perhaps the article was a broad overview of a topic or was generalized to suit a wide audience. As your business has developed, you will have narrowed your audience and rewritten your buyer personas as you learned who was searching for your solutions and who seemed to be connecting with your message online. Write a similar article, focusing on addressing your newly defined target audience and their stage in the buyer’s journey.
For a more in-depth look at repurposing content, Neil Patel has written an excellent article on this subject.
8. Create A “Best Of” List
If you have enough articles on a particular topic, create a “best of” list of related articles. Add in some reasons why those articles made your Top 10 list, including metrics, case studies, and anecdotal evidence supporting their usefulness.
9. Refresh With Updated Strategies
With technology and best practices in your field changing rapidly, you’ll need to update your articles with new statistics and additional research. If your article containing outdated strategies is found online it can damage your reputation. You want your content to stay evergreen. Refreshing your content will help it stay current and will help you become a trusted source of information in your field.
10. Share Evergreen Content
If your article is still relevant or it’s been updated, it will get additional exposure when you re-share it on your social channels periodically. Add it into your content rotation. We know that posts on social media can have a short shelf-life. When you post it again you will potentially reach additional viewers that didn’t see it the first time you shared it.
We know how hard you work creating fresh content. But don’t neglect those articles that you invested time creating when you first started your blog. Use these tactics to breathe new life into your stale blog articles and keep them out of the content marketing graveyard.
