Why Updating Old Posts Will Change Your Blog’s Fortunes

Guest article by James from Organize IT
As a blogger you are constantly evolving both your blogging knowledge and your writing skills. When I originally started Organize IT, it was barely a hobby and because I was inexperienced at blogging the quality of the posts were largely quite poor. Titles were terribly SEO unfriendly, the writing was often basic with little real value and there were few reliable links to relevant sources. Thankfully I like to think that has changed, but there still a few old posts in my archive that hold no value.

Posting regularly for even just a few months will mean that you build up a decent archive of content. Over a year you can build up hundreds of posts. That’s invaluable, but if many of them aren’t up to scratch they can get lost in the mix, never bookmarked and largely forgotten by Google. That’s a big waste. To resolve all these problems I highly suggest that you start a new, regular activity of revisiting and updating these old and low-value posts.

Update Blog Archives

My own personal process is currently to revisit two to three posts every week. I’ve started right at the beginning of my archive and am slowly working my way forward. For each post I do the following:

• Improve grammar, spelling, structure, etc. The more you blog the more you realize the importance of good presentation. However, earlier posts can be pretty sloppy, and if it’s so bad that people struggle to read through it, that’s a serious problem.
• Change to a more SEO friendly title. If you do only one thing, do this. It can make all the difference to search rankings for that post (indeed the number of search engine visitors I get has increased week on week from doing this). Describe it in a compelling way and be sure to get important keywords into it.
• Add any relevant images and links. When you are rushing to complete a post these sorts of little details often get neglected. However it’s better late than never to add them.
• Add extra value, detail and depth to the post so as to make it more interesting and useful to the reader. You want people to come away from your blog thinking, “That’s interesting!” or, “That was a useful read!”

The last point is particularly important. Many of my earlier posts were merely links to other interesting articles from other sites with a brief commentary by me. Hardly useful. However when I update these posts I can often add much more of my own opinion and thoughts, essentially making it a full post of value. Just because a post is a year old doesn’t mean it has to be forgotten about.

James is a blogger and aspiring author who covers productivity, organization and self improvement with an heavy focus on practical, actionable advice. You can check out more of his posts at Organize IT. Got some tips to share, you can also write a guest article on QOT.