Let’s face the truth. It is not easy to just write an article, publish on a website and then start getting traffic in thousand numbers. Especially if you are a veteran blogger, then it needs a lot of more work to get potential and high traffic.
Every writer knows that publishing a new content means a well-researched, well-written and engaging piece of article he/she needs. You have to give meaningful and to-the-point information with showing your brilliance in writing. We can discuss a whole day about writing new blog posts and how to make them more conversational and engageable. But, today our topic is about revamping your old content to get more and potential traffic. We will find why you should republish your old posts with up to date content and how it will help to get more traffic.
Why should you do that?
Every or most of writers think that the content they have created are best out of their thoughts and are the masterpieces of their work. It is true too. But, there are certain reasons that are recommended to every writer or publisher to edit the old published posts.
Recycling the older posts with a new and updated content is a great idea especially when you can’t come up with new thoughts. Because sometimes, interactions with readers can get you new topic ideas to write on. Updating an older post can turn to be a lifesaver.
Another advantage of republishing older posts with up-to-date content is, you will get more exposure to your articles. Let me explain this. Think that you published a post a year ago. At that time, you may have fewer subscribers and daily readers to your blog posts. You may have less social media outreaches too. So despite having a quality article, you do not get the desired traffic or goal you have set for it. But, if you republish it with latest information and research, there are good chances to achieve what you expected and sometimes even more than that.
How you will get more traffic and what will you benefit from updating older posts with new content?
With the time progress, there are a lot of new things happen; new researches are done, and many new features are added to a particular topic. So from a user point of view, if you change and republishes your older posts with up-to-date content, then it is more likely to become attractive to stay on for reading.
After a republished post with updated content, you will see a significant change in the user behavior, traffic, and engagement on that page when you check its analytics. By doing this, you will get more chance of good rankings in search pages as the search engine ranking factors are also dependent on the user engagement, article quality, bounce rate, and how much traffic you are getting on that particular post.
And a fact is that editing, modifying, and republishing an old post with new research is much easier than starting with a fresh idea and write from scratch. Because you know what you have written, how you have made research on that and from you will get latest and truthful information to update it. This is an advantage of editing and updating older posts to get more traffic.
How will you decide which post to republish?
Okay, you are convinced to republish the older articles with the latest information, right? Now, let’s see how will you find which post you should republish first and how many posts you should republish. This is important because if you update and republish a post which is likely to on an off-bit topic for the recent time, then there are fewer chances to get more traffic on that.
Also, it is not necessary that you republish each and every post on your blog or website, because some are evergreen topics like how to stuff and some may be having the recent news information that will not change. So, picking which to update and when to republish is a key factor. Let’s see for more details.
Step-1: Check your analytics and identify the posts which are performing better
I am not saying you are not at good writing and only 2 out of 10 of your posts will be or may be ranking on the search pages. But, it is a fact that from all of your pieces of contents, there are some classic blogs which are ranking better than the others. So, identify from analytics and focus on updating them first.
To check this, check which posts are having more inbound links, more traffic, and social shares than others. Also, find the targeted keywords for which you have written those blog posts. Posts with higher traffic, good ranking positions, and targeted keywords should be top priorities.
Step-2: Search for trending topics and how your content is relevant to that
User behavior and taste are the most important things for publishing or republishing blog post. After all, we – the writers are making articles for our readers to read them thoroughly, love them and get some benefits from it. So, find the latest trends on the web, what reader are looking for in the current time and then decide which category or article you should focus for now.
This can be said as, even if your post has less traffic than other posts on your blog, then also you should give it a priority to republish with up-to-date content to meet current user demands. So you should consider both the strategies mentioned here simultaneously.
How to update older posts without getting any negative effect on SEO?
If you have this question in mind (and it should be), then you are most serious about getting traffic. Most bloggers or publishers do SEO on the posts published on their site. So, it is important to update and republish post such as its value remains as it was.
1. Keep the same URL for an updated post
Avoid publishing a new article for replacing your older post. Because Google already may have crawled it thousands of time and if you publish a new article using some old content, then there are chances that Google mark it as a duplicate. So, update your older post with some edits and new content and republish it with the same URL. It will help to retain the value of that particular post.
2. Optimize meta description
There may be chances that you had written meta description according to the time when you published your post. So optimize it according to the content you have changed and features you have added.
3. Up-to-date content
Accuracy and truthfulness are the game changers for any blog post. Over the time, there are new features may be added or new benchmarks have been set. So make an analysis for the post and determine which areas should be updated, modified, and which information needs to be added or removed. Replace the older data with new ones if you have included them in the post, remove irrelevant content, and replace the links in the article by finding more relevant links; both; internal and external.
4. Change the title if needed, but don’t change the keywords
If you find that the title needs to be changed according to the content you have modified, then change it accordingly. But, keep the keywords in that as most of the SEO part is done on keywords and your post in ranking on them too. Also, change the title by not going way out from the original one.
5. Track before you republish
It is an important key factor regarding analytics. It helps you to know what exactly you are getting (or losing). Track the current post’s analytics in terms of traffic, user behavior, social engagement, inbound links, date of publishing, the number of social shares, lead generated through that, and the comments made by the users for the post. Record all these data and then republish the post with up-to-date content. After some time, track the post analytics and compare with the old one. This will help you to identify which changes helped you and which you should edit or retain.
So, are you ready to republish your posts now?
Share your thoughts in the article and also give your ideas if I missed something here. It will help me to republish this blog post with new and trending information! Thanks for stopping and reading by. Have great content and traffic!
This article is written by Mandip Pandya. He is a graduate in Information and Technology, a passionate blogger, SEO Specialist, and a Software Developer. He loves to write on Technology, SEO, IoT, and Gaming. Currently, he blogs at Best On Internet. Follow him: Google Plus | Facebook |Twitter.
