Chapter 18. Ten Ways to Reignite Old Content

In This Chapter

  • Optimizing previously written content

  • Modifying material to improve search placement

  • Promoting old content in new networks

Most companies look at a blog and only envision their latest posts being read and driving sales. This is a huge misconception about blogs. Although a blog is optimized to display the latest content first, there's no reason why every post in your blog couldn't be working hard for you long after it's been written.

Most companies don't ever think about returning to old posts to tweak content, but it's an incredibly powerful method for acquiring search engine traffic. Your old posts are like undiscovered treasure. You just need to unbury it and reap the benefits!

Search engines do discriminate on content by its age. Content is only old if it's never been changed, though. Change a few elements on a five year-old blog post and you've got fresh content again! And you have a number of ways to do this.

Promoting Old Content in New Blog Posts

As search engines analyze your blog, they're not just looking at the content, they're analyzing the structure and formatting of the page and also taking the site's hierarchy into consideration. Important elements are the home page, navigation, and the internal links promoted throughout the page.

When you write your post, think about referencing other relevant posts within the body of your content. Not only does it provide additional content to support the post you're writing, ...

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