How Reposting Old Blog Content Will Boost Your Traffic

“Content is king” is an adage that has been adopted and practiced by every successful blogger across the web for years. So practiced, that there’s a definite surplus in content. While content continues to flood the internet at an increasing rate, users continue to only consume so much of it. This creates a problem-or opportunity, depending on how you look at it-with blogging strategy. In an attempt to stay at the surface in such a competitive landscape, bloggers are cranking out content at a rate that takes away from the quality of their posts and contributes to the excess information put out there for users.

The effort of content production can be subsidized with reposting old blog content-an effort that can drastically increase your site’s traffic, make useable content readily available for your readers, and make your writing last longer. Content takes time to produce, so you might as well squeeze as much use out of it as you can. Part of doing that means upcycling and reposting old content, specifically the content that has performed well.

For nearly all blogs, a very small percentage of high performing posts generate the majority of traffic for your site. Take the prominent website Hubspot, for example. An analysis of their blog determined that 76% of their monthly blog views came from old posts, and similar analyses have revealed the same trend across the board. With the knowledge that the majority of blog views are coming from a handful of your older, most successful posts rather than the new stuff you’re racing the clock to finish, you can plot your next move: capitalizing on things you’ve already written by reposting old blog content.

How to Do It

• Start by identifying your top posts (most blogging platforms and websites have this information available when you log in through the back end). Look for what’s called “evergreen” content-pieces that remain relevant and fresh in concept for users, even though time has passed since it was originally published.
• Update the content. Stay on topic with what the post is about, but updates images, add a little more information, or rewrite a paragraph.
• Evaluate your keywords. Did you miss any the first time? Can you add a little to the content to include some new keywords?
• Don’t change the URL, but refresh the time stamp to reflect the current date.

Why It Works

It may seem like a practice that’s too easy to work, but it does. If the content is evergreen, it will still create a lot of user engagement by striking a relevant nerve with your audience. By tweaking your content just a little and reposting it at a later date, you can reach new users that didn’t see the post the first time who will like, link, share, and comment.

Not to be confused with duplicate content, reposted content will yield positive effects on search engine rankings. Google values quality content that performs well and offers real value to users. When you have content that has performed well, offers value, but gets buried by constant content production, reposting is a way to resurrect and reuse it.

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