You work really hard to come up with quality blog content for your website. That’s really awesome! Way too many businesses overlook their content and miss out on the incredible opportunity it brings.
Unfortunately, even those of us who do focus on content forget to review older posts for relevancy now and again. And even best pieces of evergreen content need to be reviewed after a few months or years.
The world changes. Laws, guidelines, research, and technology are constantly evolving, so what was once top-notch information can sometimes become outdated.
In this post, we want to help you stay relevant (and maybe even be iconic, too). From how often to review to what to look for, you’ll find it all right here.
Review One Month at a Time
A lot of businesses build content around a theme. This is fantastic, but it can accidentally lead you to create content that no longer fits because your theme is no longer relevant. This kind of issue is common around major world events and holidays.
Review your content a month at a time. It will allow you to nip this issue in the bud before it turns into an expensive disaster, especially if related to a holiday or to your business. You may find your content may be even more relevant if you rework it to remove the themed element, updating it to be useful throughout the entire year. If so, make the necessary updates and republish.
Are Your Posts Still Useful?
Glance through your inventory of blog post and make sure they’re all still useful to your potential readers. Do you have instructional videos or DIY tutorials for products you no longer sell or for services you no longer support? If so, it’s time to move those to your unpublished archives.
Keep them somewhere safe if you think you’ll offer that particular item again in the future. Otherwise, get them off the site to avoid creating confusion.
Check Your Statistics
Check the statistics for all of your blog posts. Which have great click-through rates, or low bounce rates? Which have almost no views and/or clicks? The amount of views, clicks, and even how long people stay on the site reading can help you pin down what works best.
Your goal is to keep the best and use these “themes” in future content.
But what about blogs that don’t perform well?
Don’t automatically discount them.
Make sure you take some time to evaluate what happened when writing and marketing the posts that didn’t perform well. Were you a keyword newbie? Did you lack the skills to market or promote your post via newsletter or social media?
Posts that just stink can be trashed. Those that need a little love, on the other hand, can be rewritten, updated with new visuals, optimized for SEO, and promoted as fresh content. Not every idea that performed poorly was bad; you may have just failed to incorporate the right marketing elements.
Check for Duplicate Content and Plagiarism
It happens. Some people plagiarize on purpose because they’re lazy. Some simply don’t know better. Still others accidentally use ideas without thinking or even copy their own ideas without citations. Google doesn’t care; they still see it as plagiarism either way.
Detecting purposeful or unintentional plagiarism takes just a few seconds and a few cents. Use CopyScape to run a simple check on the content on your site. You’ll be able to quickly and easily see if your content was copied from another website. If it was, remove it immediately and rewrite it with original wording and ideas.
If you’re wondering about partial plagiarism – such as phrases the tool catches – here’s a good rule of thumb. If it’s more than five matching words, it should probably be rephrased, rewritten, or cited with a source link to the original. The main exceptions are names (people, places, businesses) and industry “lingo” not easily translated.
Condensing Topics
Do you have a lot of old blog posts that are really just different posts about the same topic? Maybe they repeat some pieces of information, yet manage to provide unique insights in other areas. Decide if it’s more beneficial to combine all of the ideas into one easier-to-read post or even a FAQ instead.
Having tons of good content is good for your site – that’s no secret. But the inside truth is that even one piece of amazing content performs better than 10 smaller, less-useful articles in most cases.
Improve Your Writing Skills
Practice makes perfect, right? There is not a blogger on earth who was perfect when they first sat down in front of the keyboard.
Look, your ideas may have been great, but your execution was probably a little clunky at first. That isn’t an insult; it’s just the truth in any creative endeavor.
By now, you’ve had time to make a few mistakes, grow, and learn, too. Your grammar is better, your flow is perfect, and you just speak to the audience better.
Why not make that carry over to older posts by reviewing and editing them?
Review all of your posts from a simple standpoint — one of improvement. Update each so that the voice is current. And, in the words of Marie Kondo, toss anything that doesn’t “bring you joy.”
Look for Ways to Repurpose Your Content
Content that doesn’t need revision doesn’t need to sit unused. There are plenty of things you can do to repurpose your already existing library of work.
- Re-promote the work. Share it on social media or send it out in your newsletter, especially if it’s relevant to the time of year, upcoming season, or a current event.
- Republish the post on a different platform. This will not create a duplicate content problem. Sites like Medium and BizSugar are great places for businesses to start. Link back to the original post (Originally published on xyz) to send traffic back to your site.
- Use the text to create social posts, especially if you have a lot of tips and tricks. Don’t republish the entire blog as a post. Pull relevant bits of information and pair them with great visuals.
- Create infographics with the research you’ve already done. You can add them to your posts and/or use them to cross-promote the blog post on different platforms.
- Record video content based on the information presented in the blogs you’ve written. Embed them in the blog posts; or, use them separately on YouTube and other social channels.
- Design a case study. Have you had an experience that highlights the content you wrote about previously? Write a case study that links to the original blog post.
- Use your titles as inspiration for guest posts for blogs related to your own niche. You’ll attract readership while also giving back.
Your blog posts are the result of a lot of hard work and effort. Don’t let them sit collecting dust just because they’re aging. Take a close look at what you have in your archives on a regular basis. You may find room for improvement or ideas for brand new spin-offs. Either way, your site will continue to grow and thrive!
