Recently, we updated one of our old blog posts, 11 Great Ways to Finish Off your Blog Posts and it made a great impact on increasing the organic traffic to the page - yay!
The image below shows the large increase in traffic to the blog from when we first published it, and in particular after our alterations (highlighted in yellow).
What exactly did we do?
As stated in the article, we achieved these awesome results by:
Linking to related content. Internal linking aids SEO and the user’s experience.
Asking a question. Asking a question is a simple yet effective way to end your blog post because it encourages a discussion or feedback from others.
Personalised it! Understanding that personalising your content is hugely beneficial in connecting with the reader and encouraging them to come back to your site.
Having the user’s journey in mind. Nobody wants to be bombarded with CTA’s when they have just arrived on your site, be respectful!
Adding visuals. Adding visuals helped personalise the content and make it more appealing for the reader.
After seeing what an impact these changes did on achieving more traffic to our post, I’m going to give some you tips on how to actually revive your old blog posts and content. They are, as follows:
#1 Review your content
Reviewing your content is the first step you should make.
Our, 11 Great Ways to Finish Off your Blog Posts article was doing better than the rest of our blogs so we thought if we gave the article a facelift then it would perform better - which it did!
However, even if your articles aren’t performing well, it’s important to review your old content and figure out what you can do to make it better to achieve those click-through goals.
#2 Research thoroughly
When reviving your old content, it is important to research thoroughly. There may be new developments regarding your article’s topic area or you might find something unexpected which could make you stand out.
Having a team meeting or creating an online forum can help you generate ideas and explore your creativity.
#3 Look at your competitors
Looking at what types of content your competitors are producing is also a good starting point. You are able to see if you are covering all the key points in your articles, and if you think you can differentiate your content from what’s already out there, thus making it more valuable to the reader.
#4 Personalise your content
Personalising your content is something we have noticed is making a great impact on our engagement, both on our website and on social media. Being able to show that you’re more than just a business behind a logo is really important. Connecting and engaging with your audience on a personal level will aid your customer and brand relationship and will greatly increase your brand awareness.
#5 Alternate your content formats
Are you creating the same written style of blog posts all the time? Perhaps, it’s time to change it up? You could create infographics, podcasts, videos, slideshows, interviews, opinion pieces and so on. Infographics and videos are becoming increasingly popular in capturing your audience and are easily shareable.
#6 Answer a question
Optimising content for “answer box” results can be a good way to secure the top spot.
The answer box below was generated for the keyword “blog sign off” for our 11 Ways to Finish Off Your Blog Posts article.
Using SEMRush and Google AdWords Keyword Research tools, we were able to see what people are searching for, including questions. We took the most popular questions and made sure they were covered in our content which as a result, helped us achieve our “answer box.”
The Next Step
We have another few old blog posts that need a good, old reviving. This includes our 31 Short and Snappy Pieces of Content Marketing Advice article which I’m going to tackle next. I will firstly carry out keyword research followed by competitor research and then revamp the article. I’m hoping we will gain an increase in traffic like the last one did.
Have you got any tips in reviving old content? How much has your traffic increased after making altering your old blog posts? We’d love to know, tweet us @wearegecko!
- Gillian
