If your website has been around for a few years you probably have some old content:
- blog posts
- guides
- white papers
- videos
- product pages
- etc.
There can be all types of old content. Some you can use like it’s brand new. Some you can merge with other content. And some you might just want to eliminate.
Here are a few thoughts on ways to make use of old content.
Repurpose Blog Content
A great tip I learned a few years ago from a blog post or video or podcast was to check on your blog analytics. See what posts are getting the most traffic from various sources – organic search, social media, linking, etc.
Dig into it a little bit and find about ten posts that you kind of forgot about that are now getting some regular traffic. Read through them and find snippets that you can use to repurpose in other places.
Instead of just sharing the posts on social media, break out some snippets and share those on social. Maybe do a little merging (more on that later) and create a post that might work on LinkedIn. Or take some of the snippets on the same topic and turn it into a podcast episode or even a video.
I find that two kinds of posts can have long lives… The first are practical posts. Those that simply describe how to do something. The second are posts where you kind of share a mantra on life. Like this one that I did several years ago.
Posts that have long lives usually do well as other forms of content.
Update Blog Content
Another trick for boosting your blog traffic a little is to find posts that are doing well. You just did that in the last little tip. Do that again or do it at the same time.
When you find one that is doing well, see where it ranks in Google for a few terms. If you rank well, but not #1 or #2, see if you can update the post a little to boost it up to that top spot.
You’ve already proven that the post is good enough to rank well and you might be close to getting an even better ranking, which can lead to a lot more traffic.
See what the top post has and see if you can go beyond that.
Clean Up Outdated Content
Let’s say you created a guide on your website several years ago and now that you look at it you see that it’s not getting much traffic. And you also see that it didn’t really fit with your content strategy or even with the right target audience.
Hey, it happens to everybody. When you’re learning content marketing you’re not going to do everything just right. Chalk it up to learning, but now go back and see if it would make sense to delete the content from the site.
In most cases that will be a good thing, to get rid of it.
The only case that you might want to keep it would be if the content is popular. Lots of traffic, mentions, links, etc. That type of thing can lead to the overall improvement of your brand recognition, which is a good thing.
The other one to watch here is product and service content. Something that’s kind of hidden on your site. You removed it from the navigation, but it’s still live. That can usually come down and in most cases that’s the best thing to do.
Merge Similar Content*
Let’s say that you did a post five years ago that is now similar to something you’ve done more recently. See if you can take that older content and merge it with the new. There will be times when that makes sense. Other times, you may realize that it’s good to just delete that old content.
Final Thoughts
The overall goal with old content on your website is to either give it new life or to see if you should delete it to kind of clean up your site a little bit. You could just leave things alone and that will be fine. But sometimes your old content just needs a little attention to start bringing some value to your audience and as a result…value to you and your brand.