Keeping a blog updated with fresh content three or more times a week can be a challenge, particularly if you are trying to avoid reusing old topics. But believe it or not, you might be missing out on opportunities to revive your previous posts.
While you certainly can’t copy and paste an old post and reuse it like new, there are many ways to refresh and reuse old content without being too repetitive or damaging your SEO. Don’t keep spending time and money focusing on pushing out brand new content when your old content still has life left to give. Instead, follow these best practices for republishing old blog content the right way.
Change it up
Perhaps the most important thing with republishing old content is to avoid a word-for-word replication of your original post. And the danger in this isn’t just boring your longtime readers. Search engines recognize when websites are publishing duplicate content, and their search rankings suffer as a result.
Avoid doing damage to your SEO and change up your old content before sharing it again. Start by looking for posts that are outdated and no longer reflect your organization’s beliefs, capabilities, or services. You can then give the article a much-needed update that fits with your organization in its current state, all without dropping in search rankings.
Build on old ideas
You put a great deal of time and effort into coming up with creative, useful, and engaging topics for your blog. But 500 words isn’t a lot of space to share all of your ideas on a particular subject. More than likely, you have shared posts covering topics where you still have more to say.
A great way to give previously published content new life is to build on your old ideas. Whether it’s a subsection of a post that you could elaborate on, or a full blog that you approach from a new angle, many of your old topics can be put in a new light.
Don’t give your readers just a small piece of your thoughts on the matter. By continuing to elaborate on your old ideas, you offer valuable new insights and information. Not to mention you avoid going back to the drawing board for new ideas each time you need to make a blog post.
Update your title and tags
New content deserves a new name. Once you’ve updated an old post with new information, new ideas, and new perspective, your next step is to update the title and its tags to reflect those changes. Similarly to reposting identical articles, reusing titles and tags puts your organization at risk of losing readers who believe they have already read the article, or worse, damaging your SEO.
Updating your title and tags is a final step to ensure your republished content is given the same treatment as a brand new topic you wrote from scratch. And in just seconds, you give your old content new life and its own space on your blog.
Maintaining a blog is a valuable but challenging part of running an organization. If your team is ready for a content refresh, contact us today to learn more about how Allarium uses old content to help organizations succeed.
