Update Old Blog Posts and Boost SEO Traffic

Who does not love a good hack? Terms such as “quick wins” and “low-hanging fruits” are pretty common corporate turns of phrase because things that cause higher output and lower output are apparently considered good.

It is one of the prime reasons why it seems curious for several SEO-savvy and SEO-focused folks have no methodology to update old blog posts. Contrary to it, there are some companies that have a regular practice of re-sharing and updating older content. Old traffic and a large library of older content brings along several thousands of visitors every month.

  • Often, there is a power law that is applicable to the existing posts where a small number of old posts bring a significant amount of traffic (perhaps, ten to twenty percent from the top two posts and as much as eighty to eighty five percent from the top 30-35 posts). This might happen even if their previously posted content creation efforts were not even and not specifically focused on SEO.
  • Some of these posts have not been updated in last many years.
  • When updated timely, these posts can frequently witness a fifteen to thirty percent increase, which is important since those posts already symbolize a part of the overall traffic to the website.

There are several opportunities when it comes to updating existing content for helping the growth of the organic traffic. Have you ever thought why you should update posts from time to time? The first and the foremost important question is to identify which posts should be updated.

The best way to get started is to identify the posts on your website that already are driving the traffic, specifically if you have a previously posted blog where some of the most visited blogs were posted by you or your team more than six months or a year back.

In case your website has a limited amount of organic traffic, less than 5,000 unique visitors from organic search every month or in case just launched the site or blog, then you should skip this entire procedure and spend more time in building links to your domain and increasing overall traffic.  You can easily come back to this as and when your site and content matures.

It is equally important to do some basic clean-up of on page. You can use chrome extension such as Link Miner for spotting and cleaning up any broken links. Edit previous posts for any outdated information. If you have published study in 2014 then do update it as per the current situation. Also, have a list of tools and ensure they are still in business and supported as well. And, if they don’t then all you need to do is replace legacy tools with new entries into space if apt.

There is no doubt that thickening and updating old posts with additional and useful content is one of the best ways to grow and increase the volume of traffic. There is no dearth of ideas to update these old posts. Just make the right choice and decision.