If you’ve been in business a while (or if you haven’t, but just produce content on the regular), you may find that you have loads of blog posts under your belt (or within your website, in this case). That’s great news because you can actually use those blog posts to your SEO and UX advantage! 

Updating, combining, or purging old blog posts is an excellent way to capitalize upon pre-written content. And, get this, you can even repurpose those old blog posts

Old blog posts can save the day, so we’re giving you how to sort out the good, the bad, and the ugly blog posts. This will contribute to your Google ranking, give your visitors the best possible content, and bring your audience through your doors. 


Here’s what you can expect to take away from this episode on blogging:

  • How Google Analytics will help you figure out what posts are performing

  • The four categories to put your old blog posts in

  • What to do with your deleted posts' URLs

  • What to do to revitalize an old blog post

  • What to do if you don’t have a video but want to add one to your post

  • And much more


Are you ready to learn how even those older blog posts will get you more visitors and a better Google ranking? Hit the link, and let’s do it!

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Watch the video version:



Show Notes:

  • [00:01:42] What’s the first step to take in knowing whether to save my old blog posts? Research and data, baby. It always comes back to truly understanding how your content is performing. 
  • [00:02:07] What’s a junk post? Underperforming, irrelevant, unnecessary posts. 
  • [00:04:30] How do I ensure my visitor doesn’t get an error message if I delete a post? Redirect! This is super important for user experience. 
  • [00:06:24] Can I combine a series of old posts into one? 100%, highly recommend this.  
  • [00:06:48] What should I do with canned content blog posts? Check out our episode: Canned Content: Should You Use It and If So, How?  
  • [00:07:30] What steps do I take to rewrite an old blog post that needs some love? Check its grammar and spelling, update info, add video, then look at or listen to The Anatomy of an Effective Blog Post for some pointers. 
  • [00:09:48] How often should I review my blog posts for accuracy and relevance? Every three to six months is safe. 
  • [00:10:30] What are other ways I can increase my online presence? Check out our free masterclass Five SEO Secrets to Owning the First Page of Google Without Buying Ads.
  • [00:11:40] Want to suggest a topic or guest? Please do so! I’m up for a challenge! Suggest a topic for an upcoming episode of the  Propel Your Practice Podcast 


Selected links and other resources related to this episode: 

 

blog post ideas

Full episode transcript

On this episode of Propel Your Practice, we're answering the question: What do I do with all my old blog posts?

Welcome to this episode of Propel Your Practice. I'm your host Darcy Sullivan with Propel Marketing & Design. We are in the middle of a series all about blogging. When I originally put the series together, I had this vision, and I knew exactly where it was going, but then something happened via social media, and in response to the emails we sent out, more questions came in. 

So I'm using this episode and a couple other episodes to answer some of the questions that have come in around blogging that were outside of the original list that I had put together for the series.

And this episode is one of those specific topics. The question came in: What do you do with old blog posts? 

I get it. Maybe you've been in business for years now, and so you've got this large collection of blog posts sitting on your website. Or maybe you're about to switch over to a new website, and you're wondering, “Do I really need to bring all of these blog posts over with me?”

Well, in today's episode, what I want you to do, is to dive into your analytics and go through and categorize your blog posts. What we're going to do is we're going to break them down into four separate categories. Then once we have them broken down into four separate categories, we're going to take specific actions around them.

If you're taking notes, those four categories include junk blogs. These are blog posts that just don't add value. They don't drive traffic to your website. Or they are not geared to your target audience, or maybe they just have inaccurate information that is not worth updating. So that's category one.

And we're going to circle back to what you should do for each of these categories, but first, I want to walk you through them. So category one is the junk category. 

Category two, I'm calling multiples. These are blog posts that either you have very similar versions of, or maybe you have two blog posts that are pretty similar. Maybe you wrote one three years ago, and you wrote one a year ago. Or maybe you wrote a short series of blogs all around one specific topic category. 

There are blog posts that just need a little love. They might be older, but they are blog posts that still can resonate with your target audience if you give them a little love. 

Then, the final and fourth category are the blog posts that are okay for the time being.

So now we have all of your blog posts divided into four categories. And what you can do is go to Google Analytics and look at how each of the blogs that you have is performing. 

And you might want to look at how they've been performing over six months or over a year, or if it was a blog post that you wrote three years ago, then gauge it to the time period that you wrote it to see how it performed at that time.

Now let's head back and look at each of these categories and how you should tackle content that falls in each of the categories.

So category one, these are the junk. These are posts that just don't add value, don't really drive website traffic, aren't geared to your target audience, or contain inaccurate information. That's absolutely not worth organizing or refreshing in this category. 

What you want to do, is take the URL from that junk post and redirect it to a better source. So we don't want to just go in and delete blog posts before we redirect that URL. Because if we do that, somebody is going to get a 404. They're going to get an error when they go to that page. So instead, what we want to do is we want to go in and to tell the website to redirect the URL from where it was headed to a new location. 

In most cases, with junk blog posts, you probably have either a better resource, or if it's completely irrelevant, then you want to redirect it to the main page on your website, which is usually your main blog page.

Once you have confirmed that the old URL does, in fact, redirect to the new URL that you want to point it towards, then it's okay to delete that actual post. 

Okay, onto category number two. These are the ones that I classified as the multiples. These are either short blog posts that you have similar versions of or, let's say, you wrote a short series.

We work with a lot of chiropractors, so I'll give a chiropractor example here-

Maybe you wrote a short series a while back all around running. What you could do is take the elements of, let's say, three running blog posts that were short, or just not performing the way they used to or outdated, and merge them into one larger, more detailed, higher quality blog post. 

So instead of being three separate three-part series on running, you could instead create an Ultimate Guide to Running blog post.

In this case, what you want to do is create a brand new blog post merging the best of the sections from those multiple blog posts, then redirect all the old URLs to the new URL. Once you confirm that that new URL is, in fact, in place, then you can go through and delete those old blog posts.

Now, I think it's a good time to mention canned content because a lot of times, people ask, “Well, what do I do with some of this canned content that I had purchased years ago that's sitting on my blog?” We have a podcast dedicated specifically to what you should do if you have canned content. 

So if that's the situation that you're in, be sure to check out the episode Notes and get the link to that podcast, where we dive into what to do with the canned content. If you have some of that as blog posts.

Next, we have that category three. These are the blog posts that need a little love.

For these blog posts, you want to go ahead and give them a good solid once-over. Check for grammar mistakes, rework any content that should be adjusted. If you haven't had a chance yet to listen to our podcast on The Anatomy of an Effective Blog Post, you are going to want to check that out cause that'll give you some information about how to properly structure blog posts. 

So if you're going back through and looking at some older blog posts that, you know, could use some love, but don't know how to deal with them, give that episode a listen. 

So you want to jump into these old blog posts and fix any grammar mistakes, any spelling mistakes. The tool Grammarly is a great free resource to help you. If you aren't already using it, I highly recommend it. 

You want to go through and make sure that you're creating headlines and that the article has a solid name and foundation for success. Check out the accuracy, see if there's anything that needs to be updated. Maybe you can cite a new source or add a new paragraph in. 

Also, consider visual appeal. Is there a video that you could embed that would go directly along with that blog post? And here's a tip for you: If you want to add content like video to a blog post, but you don't have a video that matches that content, you can embed somebody else's video from YouTube. You just want to make sure that they aren't direct competition for you. 

So go through and just give the basic once-overs of seeing how you can adjust and revamp that blog post to make it new again.

In fact, over on our website, we have a blog post up, 7 Ways to Update Old Blog Posts and Boost SEO. If you're going to go through and update some old blog posts, that's a really great resource for you to check out.

Finally, we have category number four. These are the blog posts that are okay for now. What you want to do is revisit these blog posts in three to six months to check them to see if their category has changed.

So that's it, simple and sweet. 

What you want to do is go through and examine each of your blog posts individually, categorize them in one of those four categories, and then take the actions associated with that category.

I hope you found this episode helpful if you’ve been examining your old blog posts, wondering what you should do with them.

Before we head out, I want to invite you to join in on a free masterclass I put together on the Five SEO Secrets to Owning the First Page of Google Without Buying Ads.

You can find a link to sign up for this free masterclass in the Show Notes of this episode or by visiting PropelYourCompany.com/learn

During this workshop, we do a deep dive into strategies to help you improve your online presence. Including your Google Business Profile, that's what used to be called the Google My Business listing, and what controls the Google Maps section. Along with how voice SEO plays a big role in today's search and where you should be focusing your efforts online for the biggest impact. 

All right. Well, that's it for today. Again, you can join the masterclass by visiting PropelYourCompany.com/learn. And if you have a topic that you would like to hear on an upcoming episode of Propel Your Practice, please send it in by visiting PropelYourCompany.com/podcast-topics or looking for the link in the show notes. 

Thanks so much for your time. I'll talk to you soon. 

Darcy’s SEO strategies are easy to implement and effective. She’s the #1 SEO expert I refer to whenever I need help with my rankings.

 

- Nicholas Scalice, Growth Marketing Podcast // Growth Marketer

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Sponsors

This episode of the Propel Your Practice Podcast is brought to you by Propel Marketing & Design. Propel Marketing & Design helps Chiropractors, Acupuncturists, Physical Therapists, Wellness Practitioners, and other clinic owners improve their website rankings.


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