One of the saddest things is writing an awesome blog post and then watching it experience a quick death. You put in so much work into that post and all you got was a short bump in traffic and now the traffic for the post is down to almost nothing. In this post, I want to talk about ways to resurrect traffic to old blogs.
Internally Link to Blogs in Content
One of the easiest things you can do is link to your older blog posts in your newer content. That makes a big difference, to search engines and to users. Make sure to have a strong call to action and link to the posts with terms you want to rank for. In addition, one thing you can do is go into Google Search Console and find the top linked to posts externally. Generally, these are your powerful posts and pages on your site. Well, one of the best things you can do is link from these posts to the older ones you want to rank. This way, you are passing some authority to those posts, reviving them and getting them to rank for the keywords you want.
Once you Have Enough Blogs on a Topic, Create an Index Page Listing Them All
Say you have written a blog post on 30 posts on SEO companies, how to pick them, and how much they cost. Well, a great SEO strategy is to take all the posts on a topic and put them into a hub, or link to all of them from one single page. Good publishers all know about this strategy, but novice bloggers often don’t realize the potential. Sure, you have categories on your blog. But have you optimized the titles, descriptions, h1, h2, copy and image on that category? Have you made that template into an optimized hub for that section? I am guessing not. Take a look at what Search Engine Land has done here. They have written a million posts on SEO. So instead of letting them fade silently into the night, they have taken the best post and added them to this hub page.
Now, that is an example of a page that has been updated with blog posts. Let’s take a look at a category. Here we see one that they have optimized for the Panda Update and guess what, it ranks #1! Why is that? It’s because they have an optimized category template, frequently updated content and as a result, a ton of fresh content and external links. This to me is the best model for SEO and the best way you can “earn” rankings.
Share Old Posts on Social Media and Pick Top Posts for Social Media Ads
I have worked really hard on a few key posts over the years. Some of these posts are evergreen, so any time I share them people are like, “wow, that is an awesome piece of content.” Here are three examples.
- The Big List: 80 Of The Hottest SEO, Social Media & Digital Analytics Tools For Marketers
- The Ultimate Guide to Multilingual and Multiregional SEO
- Ranked #1 for SEO, How Many Links does it Take?
Whenever I want to drive a little more traffic, I can just share these posts again. They pretty much always get extra engagement. In addition, because I know people find these topics interesting, I can run social media ads on these post. This really ups the ‘Likes’ and shares for these posts overtime.
Update Content on Old Blogs and Republish Them, But Make Sure to Update the Date
You only get one good chance to rank for a big term in your niche. Let me give you an example. We wrote the ultimate guide to responsive design and SEO. Which is an awesome topic for an SEO company… So that post has the potential to rank for keywords such as responsive design and SEO, guide to responsive design and SEO, SEO and responsive design, etc. However, when I first launched the post, it didn’t get a lot of shares and a good index. But I recently added another 600 words to it and updated the dates. After doing that and getting another round of social shares, it started to rank for some terms, such as “guide to responsive design and SEO.” When it comes down to it, every piece of content on your website is a living and breathing thing and needs to be updated as much as possible.
Create Email Education Programs and Email Blogs as Part of the Drip Campaign
I have not done this yet, but I am dying to and I really have a lot of respect for this strategy. Allow me to flush it out. I’ve written thousands of posts on SEO and social media. Everything from basic to advanced topics… So why not take 50 of those post, organize them, and set up a course on SEO? When someone signs up they get 2 post a week that lead them into becoming an SEO expert. There are some great internet marketers out there who have done this. It is a lot of work, but that can help you attract traffic to old post and gather email addresses.
Add Related Posts at the Bottom of Each Blog
If you are looking to increase page views and get more exposure for old content, you really should read these two posts.
- How you Can Triple the Average Pages Per Visit on your Blog
- How to Create the Best Sidebar for your Blog
Those two posts really get into the nitty-gritty of pushing a blog to the next level. Of course, one really easy thing you can do to get your post more exposure is to add related post at the bottom of the post.
Expand on Shorter Posts with More Information
I’ve written blogs that are way too short. In the past, pre-Google Panda Update, you could write short post and get them ranked all day. But now, I don’t publish anything under 600 words, even if it is a new post, which typically can be shorter. Now, we are an Internet marketing company so we are in a really competitive niche. You can have shorter posts in less competitive niches. However, long story short, it is a good idea to go back and add more to the post you really didn’t do a good job with, especially if they are evergreen content. If you want more information on maintaining those rankings and curating older posts watch this video I did on maintain rankings for SEO.
Share Your Older Posts with People Who Like Them
Hopefully at this point you have an influencer strategy to some degree. You need to find top people in your niche where you scratch their back and they scratch yours. If you’re not sure how this works, there is a post I love that talks about how to get one going.
Make sure to find those people who you have aligned with and get your posts in front of them. If they didn’t see your older post and it was really good, feel free to send it to them again.
SEO for Old Blog Posts, The Final Word
Hopefully, this gave you some ideas on SEO for old posts. Those post are still out there and they are waiting patiently to be revived. Now log back into your website and get them working for you again!
