I was reading through some of my old posts the other day, when I suddenly realised that I was missing out on a lot of potential traffic and exposure. What I was thinking is ‘why aren’t my old posts getting any comments anymore?’ The answer the this is simple… it was because I wasn’t promoting them anymore.
Since then, I’ve started to ponder on the importance of old posts. From thinking about that, I’ve got some ideas which could hopefully help you bring your old posts back to life!
Link to them on new posts
This one’s really simple, and I’ve been doing it for a while now. Quite simply, if you touch on a topic in a new post that relates to an old post, link to it. For example, in my recent article called ’10 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Starting A Blog’, I linked out to two different posts, and also to a category page. It’s incredibly easy to do this tactic, infact, I just did it!
Sidebar Ads
Something I’ve recently implemented here on Teenius is advertising old posts in the sidebar. I initially got this idea when I saw it over on Blogussion. It’s a great way to get traffic to your old posts, especially if you put them in a prominent position.
Publicize
Just advertising the post as you would any other post is a great way to revitalise it. Tweet it, stumble it, whatever! Just try and get traffic to it. Infact, one good way is to comment on other blogs with the post URL as your website, or another is to do a guest post and advertise the article in your author bio.
Reposting
This is where you bring the article back up to the top of your blog. I did it with my article ‘5 Reasons Why Wordpress Rocks’. Quite simply, I changed the published date on Wordpress from April (the original date of the post) to the present. It’s a great way of getting more exposure to the post, but at the same time if you do it often then your readers could start to get bored.
Favourites Section
Another idea I found on Blogussion here. All you need to do is make a new category entitled ‘favourites’ (or something along those lines) and put it as a page on your blog. This will show your readers the best posts on your blog, which could mean great internal traffic for older posts! To read the whole article on Blogussion about this, please click here.
Something to note
I think the thing to remember the most when you bring an old post back to life is to only do it with your best posts. It takes quite a lot of time and effort to get more exposure to that post, and if you did it for every article it probably wouldn’t work as well. I would strongly recommend going through your posts and selecting the ones that you feel underperformed in terms of traffic and comments when you originally posted it.
What about you?
Do you make sure your old posts get new readers? If so, how? Would you like to add anything to this post? As always, I’d love to hear from you, so feel free to leave a comment below.
Also, don’t forget to sign up to my RSS feed if you liked this article.
I actually liked the idea about reposting. But as you said, if you do it often, readers might get bored. However, I wouldn’t mind to do it with my older posts, which i belive, didn’t get enough exposure as my blog was still new then.
Exactly. Also, remember that your new readers might not have seen the post. When I reposted the article about Wordpress, it was originally posted in April, and only a few of the commentators from then are still here!
You can also use feature post for it.
I been doing link to other post all the time, it great way to promote our older post.
Sidebar thingy, yes I notice in blogussion and it ever change rapidly I like that, I think when my blog have enough number of content i will be doing that too
for re-posting, unless the post is older than one year.. it better if you don’t do it
favorite or featured, both can be great way to promote oldie but goodie
for now, i just do display 20 random post in sidebar
The random posts bit isn’t a bad idea, especially if you’re showing 20 posts, the probability is that you’re likely to get a few old posts up there every now and again!
However, I must disagree with your reposting point. I reckon the time you should wait varies for every blog; I personally reposted one article around 5 months after it was originally posted and it was fine
is it reposting will count as copied content to search engine???
I don’t think it is reposting Bill. If I understood it right, you just move the post higher so , it would be visible to the readers.
it just like you delete old post and repost it..
Exactly. You’re not actually putting the post on your blog again, you’re just changing the date on it so that it goes to the ‘latest post’ slot!
i can see recent posts in ur sidebar but wer are older posts in sidebar as u mentioned in ur post ?
anyways i am trying to inter link older post as to get them good juice and attention. Inter linking also helps getting older posts re-index in search engines back
When I said put them in the sidebar, I actually meant with pictures (like Blogussion do, and like I showed in the post next to the point), but actually linking to them normally is not a bad idea.
Thanks for the comment!
i put them on the sidebar, only the good ones. however, not every old post that is ranking or getting traffic is actually good and well informative, so here is what i do. i write them, a fresh, and then re-direct the old post to it
Yeah, it’s really important to only display the good posts, as these articles are going to have the highest traffic of all of the ones on your blog, so when people visit you want to make sure they see your very best writing, rather than just average articles!
Great post!
As my blog is still relatively new I have not had the need to link back to older posts but I will start doing that more often now!
Tweeting an old post every now and then is also a good way of bringing it back to life!
It is never too early to mention old posts, even if they are one day old. As long as they are relevant to your content, then link.
I can understand that if your blog is quite new (like yours) then it’s difficult to do things like reposting it, as most the readers you have would have seen it before. However, the other points are still valid
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by izzataziz: RT @teenius: 5 Ways To Bring Your Old Blog Posts Back To Life http://bit.ly/2lHYeC PLEASE RT!!…
I agree it’s a good idea to give old posts a boost if you think they are still relevant. As my blog gets a little older, I will probably start to repost every now and again since I know many of my readers won’t have read it the first time around.
Great tips on bringing old posts back to life.
Just want to add one more. If you have some personal favorites, you could simply release a special post, newsletter or email on that list. Something like a “top 10 most viewed of 2009″ or “reader favorites from last month” or something along those lines.
Pojnt #1 is called deep linking and should be done both ways, old to new and new to old. It’s not only good for reader participation, but AWESOME SEO.
As for the graphic in the sidebar, you best make it a pillar post, not just something random.
I think the sidebar ad is an awesome idea. I’ve utilized the repost and linking to older post within newer post. Both tend to work pretty well. I’m excited about this new sidebar idea. Thanks a lot!
Nice article Simon, after my examz I have to format my old articles!
And have to link them to many articles… so many works!
Hey thanks for this great post, Its true that we spend a lot of time writing the posts but they become useless after few posts. Thanks for these awesome tips
Hey, Really nice post Simon, I actually never thought about recycling posts before although this have given me some other ideas!
I am doing my best to link to old popular posts and posts which I reference in new posts. This is one way I can increase their views. A cool WP plugin to use for searching for old posts and to link to them is insights plugin.
Hey Simon,
Awesome post. I have a large niche blog where the old posts were not very keyword targeted but were very well written. I’m planning to republish with new titles and slight rewrites…. Luckily worpress will redirect the old to the new while Google works it out.
Thanks.
I am already following few of these steps. Also i have installed featured gallery for some posts to be shown in prime locations of the blog
I just love all the idea you suggested. Its a nice way to expose our older posts. We can also use plugin known as Quick SEO which automatically hyperlink some keywords aand tags used in the post.
Is republishing the post is good for SEO(I have some doubt on it). Also it might be a bad impression on your regular visitors.
Tweeting an article is a nice way to expose older articles.
commenting on comments can also bring new traffic to old posts.
Use the popular posts section, that can bring the popular posts of the past to the view of readers. Giving them a catchy title like “Worth reading” or ” You might also like” makes the readers know what to read next in the blog.
Dealing with older blog posts is something that I’ve dealt with in the past. I’ve tried linking to them in newer posts and I’ve had the most success in doing that. I love the suggestion of changing the date. It is something so simple and I wish I had thought of it!
Advertising your older posts in your sidebar sounds like a great idea! It’s something that I will definitely have to try out.
Eric B.´s last blog ..6 Tips to Take Your WordPress Theme from Good to Great
I keep a list of “Popular Posts” in my sidebar. It’s a manual list so it’s not based on comments or anything else, so I can put whatever I’d like in it. I don’t keep much in my sidebar so it works pretty well at getting people to navigate around the site. Also every once in a while I’ll tweet older posts which after some RTs get the post some new-found love.
i also always try linking to my older posts. and hey its a good idea of linking older posts in sidebar banners. Thanx for the useful post and it surely brings back life to our blog posts
Great ideas! I like the idea of advertising older posts on your own site. Thanks for the tips!
Adam´s last blog ..How I Spend my Time
[...] 52. 5 Ways To Bring Old Posts Back To Life One thing that many bloggers neglect is their old posts. They write the post, promote it for a day or two, then move on to the next one. This is a HUGE mistake, as you’re practically losing all the benefits the old post brings, so here’s some tips to bring it back to life! View the full article here >>> [...]