subject: 5 Ways to Breathe New Life Into Old Blog Posts [print this page] 5 Ways to Breathe New Life Into Old Blog Posts
Bloggers who have been regularly writing to their blogs may have already accumulated a long list of posts in their blog archives. In time, these posts become forgotten and very rarely read anymore. However, certain posts in the past may still carry a lot of relevance today. These posts may even hold the key to revitalize the entire blog, or increase blog traffic, or uplift the blogger's reputation. Here are five useful tips to bring relevant blog content out of retirement:
1. Know when to update.
You shouldn't update:
-- When blog content must stand as an official record or statement, to reflect your state of mind and personality at that particular time in the past.
-- When the post is part of a corporate blog, as a corporate document and a piece of history that records your organization's evolution.
You should update:
-- When blog content is inaccurate, or missing some important details not available during the time of initial writing.
-- When post is part of an opinion blog, and as long as you are willing to disagree with your own past opinions.
-- When links are broken, and no longer directs readers to the sites they initially referred to.
2. Update with care.
-- Re-write the original. You can overhaul the post totally, adding more details or subtracting irrelevant ones. But careful that the essence of the post does not disappear after the re-write.
-- Append to the original. Add a sub-head titled "Update" after the original post and write your new ideas. You can keep on updating from here on by just appending new time-stamped updates.
-- Fix broken links. Perhaps the referenced site is no longer up. Or the affiliate product you were referring to is no longer sold. Updating the links assure the continued usability of your post to readers.
3. Re-post the original. If the blog content is not bound by specific details like time, event or people, you can directly re-post it again. Just be careful that it is still very relevant and current in tone and content, to be of value to current readers.
4. Update-less reinvention. Key blog posts can make use of touch-ups without having to re-write the content altogether. Here are some ways to do this:
-- Re-tag. Some tags may sound "old" or no longer relevant to current situations. For example, "SEO" was a common tag then, but today SEO may be broken down to more specific tags such as "social media" or "link-building".
-- Reference in new posts. Create fresh posts that refer to the old post to support the topic or idea. Readers are then directed to the old post when they read the new one.
-- Comment. Check the comments section of your post and reply to commenters, to stimulate conversation.
5. Inter-link your blog posts. Spend some time to review your previous posts. Find ways to link related posts with each other. From here on, make it a habit to link your new posts with past ones. Here are the benefits of inter-linking your posts:
-- Search engine rankings. Search algorithms favor links in determining ranking. This goes for both external and internal links. Internal links also help search bots index your site and rank it better.
-- Usability. Readers get more value from a single post that contains links to other useful or related posts, as a form of suggested or further readings.
-- Visibility. Posts gathering dust in your archives are activated when users click on them through links from other posts.
As the blog owner, you can update your blog posts in any way you think best -- from making quick fixes to major overhauls. When you do so, just remember that readers should eventually benefit from the changes you made to your blog content.
