How to Update and Republish Your Outdated Blog Content

Things become outdated. It’s a fact of life...even our content becomes outdated and irrelevant after so long.

Why You Should Update and Republish Your Outdated Blog Content

1. At any moment, a new prospect can find a blog post you wrote days, months or even years ago!  One of the biggest advantages of blogging is that content continues to drive traffic results and leads over time through organic search. But! If your prospect doesn’t check the date on your blog post, they'll probably  have no idea that they’re reading outdated and (possibly) inaccurate information.

2. Odds are, the prospects reading your blog today are not the same propspects who were reading your blog months and years ago. And even if they were, they probably didn’t read every blog post. Prospects’ needs change, so something that wasn’t relevant to them last year may be relevant to them now. By updating and republishing some of your older yet high-performing blog content, you’ll extend the life of it.

3. It’s easier to update and republish an older blog post than it is to write a new one. This doesn’t mean that you should stop creating new and original content for your blog. But it will reduce your content creation time while you maintain consistency.

How to Pick What Posts to Update and Republish

How do you decide which blog posts you should update and republish? Here are a few things to consider:

Identify Top Performing Blog Posts With Metrics

You can rarely go wrong when you base your decisions on metrics. Use the following metrics to help you decide if you should update and republish a certain blog post:

• Inbound Links. Your inbound links show authority -- the more inbound links you have, the higher your authority.

• Traffic. Determine which blog posts are still generating a lot of traffic using analytics. Here’s a snippet of our blog analytics from the past month:
  

• Social Shares. Social shares factor into your search rankings, and are also a good indicator of a high-performing blog post.

• Keywords. You can support your keyword strategy by updating and republishing blog content. If you’re trying to rank for certain keywords, you can use a keywords tool to identify your keyword ranking opportunities.

When looking at your metrics, don’t forget to consider the relevancy of your blog posts. If your prospects are continually searching for a certain topic, but your metrics don’t indicate that it’s a high performing blog post, you may still want to consider updating and republishing.

Your blog acts as a solution to your prospects’ problems. Listen to them and answer the questions that they're searching.

Updating and Republishing Blog Posts Best Practices

Now that you’ve identified your blog posts with metrics, it’s time to actually update and republish.

Here are some best practices:

1. Keep your URL the same and update the original post

Modify your original post, don’t publish another post on your blog. Your page may be dinged from a search engine for duplicate content.

2. Keep your keywords even if you change the title

If you need to change your title try to avoid changing your keywords drastically.

3. Be transparent with an editor’s note

It’s important to remain transparent with your prospects. They may become confused if your publish date is current, but there are comments from months and years ago.

Here’s an example of an editor’s note: Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in May 2015 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

4. Update for accuracy

After so long, there a number of things about a blog post that can become outdated. Evaluate your post for accuracy by determining what needs to be changed, added, or removed. Including:

• No longer relevant content
• Outdated content
• Replace statistics and examples with updated ones
• Add new best practices
• Check external links and replace when necessary
• Update CTAs

5. Republish!

After accomplishing the previous steps, your blog post is ready to republish.

6. Track Your Performance

It’s a good idea to create a record of the post’s performance before you republish it. This way you can compare it to the updated post’s performance.

Repurposing old blog content is a great way to keep driving traffic and leads to your website. Are you looking for more way to drive traffic and leads with your content? Download our Content Marketing Essentials for Surviving the World of Modern Lead Generation.