In this post we’ll explain how to optimise old blog posts and web pages, so you can get new eyeballs on your old website and blog posts.
You’ve invested time and effort in creating blog posts over multiple years, but after the initial burst of views, the content seems to wither away. Given the estimate that 94% of online content gets no traffic, the chances are that most of your archive content is not being seen.
The good news is that your existing content is actually a fantastic asset. After all, your content could still be packed with useful information, entertaining insights, and tips that could help your audience to save money, complete projects or make the most of a new destination.
So how can we optimise that archive content to give it a fresh lease of life? In this post I’ll share five tips for website owners and bloggers who want to use SEO to optimise older content in their archive. The intention isn’t to rewrite your existing content, but rather to update it and optimise it in ways that give it the best chance of being discovered. Ready?
Tip 1: Make sure the content is still timely
It may be that you wrote a guide to the best family festivals back in 2015. Since then some of the festivals no longer run, or new festivals have started. Take a good look through your post, and ensure that information is accurate, that outbound and internal links still work (and use the new HTTPS format) and consider whether new information should be added. If you want to know how to optimise old blog posts, start by ensuring the content is still worth reading!
To save time, I recommend using Chat GPT or another AI tool to consider what new information to add. It’s pretty simple to ask Chat GPT to review the text in your blog post and ask, “Review this text and tell me how the article could be updated to reflect family festivals that have started or closed since [publication date]”. As ever, I don’t recommend asking a GPT to create content for you, but as a researcher, it’s pretty hard to beat. For other tips on using AI to make your copywriting more efficient, check out our guide to AI for copywriters.
Tip 2: Update your keywords
Depending on how old your content is, you might have not optimised it for keywords at all, or you may have used a keyword or optimisation strategy that doesn’t reflect today’s best practice.
- Start by choosing your target keywords for the post
- Use your keyword in your post title, headline, first paragraph and throughout the copy
- Consider adding variations of your keyword in image alt tags and the text. For example if your keyword was “red baseball boots” you might add “baseball boots red” “red and white baseball boots” “red boots” as variant or cluster keywords
- Is this the only post on your site optimised for this specific keyword phrase? It’s unhelpful to have multiple posts attempting to rank for the same keyword
Tip 3: Update images
When optimising old posts, consider your blog post images. In the early days of the Internet images were smaller, because our audience was working on a slower Internet speed. My early photographs also not as good as the photos I take today on a smartphone!
You may want to add higher quality images, or replace stock images with something that you’ve created yourself. Posts that are stock images plus text don’t do as well in search. So it’s worth using your own photos or graphics wherever possible.
Tip 4: Link, link, link
Research consistently shows that the posts ranked in the top spots for most Google queries have numerous links. Not just links to your post from other sites, but links from your own site. So optimising old content means you need to add two types of internal links.
First, add links from your post to other posts on your own site or blog. Second, go to other posts on your blog and add links back to your original post. Don’t set up too many reciprocal links. This is where Post A links to Post B and Post B links to Post A). Instead, you want to build up a natural network of links that pull your content together. This helps Google understand what it’s about, and which content is most important.
Make sure you also have one or two external links that point to other websites to each of your posts. This adds credibility and boosts your visibility online.
Tip 5: Add more content
SEO experts say that it’s important to add value to the user experience of your content. So if you want to know how best to optimise old blog posts, ask, “How can I help this content to do a better job of answering the audience’s question?”
- Could you add a table, list or other expert summary of information?
- Can you use your insight to make a simple infographic?
- Could you use an AI tool to create original imagery to illustrate the content?
- Could you embed a video that adds more insight to a process?
- If this is a tutorial, could you capture a screen recording to show the process in action? Try using a tool like Scribe or Loom.
- Could you add an FAQ or jargon buster section? This not only adds value but helps add in more cluster keywords and variations to improve on-page SEO