Backlinks
One of the biggest reasons to continue to market old blog content is for the backlinks. Specifically, the fact that the content has already been marketed means it already has a backlink profile. Marketing the content again through methods like social media mentions of older content in reference to new stories or sharing the content through new channels increases its backlink profile. Referencing the old content in your company newsletter reduces demand on your content marketing team while generating new visits to the website.
You can put linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. on those older pieces of content to your newest articles or homepage to send visitors to the old content on the site, something search engines reward with higher rankings since time on site is used as a measure of website quality. And all this is achieved without having to alter your internal linking.
Don’t forget the value of promoting the newest version of your product along with content about the older versions of the product. For example, someone trying to troubleshoot errors on version 3.0 may be receptive to a sidebar promoting deals on a brand new version 4.0.
Cheap and Easy to Maintain
If you update existing blog content, whether by improving its search engine optimisation, updating it per the latest information on the subject or placing an addendum at the end, you refresh it and raise its importance to the search engines. It then receives a higher ranking than it previously had, but without the effort required to get search engines to see the content in the first place and have it rank well. There’s also the fact that updating existing content typically takes less time than creating new content. For example, if you elaborate on key points or provide relevant examples to a short blog post, you make the content more engaging without the need to write a whole new article on the topic.
Updating websites does not necessarily require rewriting the content. Reworking the title tag, and adding meta descriptions increase the ranking of the content with search engines. Tweaking the meta data could significantly improve your SEO even without altering the content itself. Putting social media sharing buttons and a call to action on the page will increase social media sharing of the content and dramatically expand the page’s backlinks. Conversely, adding calls to action to follow your company on Facebook or sign up for the newsletter could increase customer engagement with the brand for a fraction of the effort of creating new content and marketing it.
Return on Investment
Investigate the traffic to your older content. If it is receiving traffic but does not converts to paying customers, revising this content to better promote your product or service is worth the effort. For example, Hubspot found that when they optimised existing content, they doubled their conversions. They saw 200% or higher conversions, all for the cost of the data analysis and some editing. These numbers were achieved without even increasing traffic to the articles.
This is certainly better than creating new content and trying to position it right, since the older content already has visitors. With some research, you may also find new opportunities based on the demographics of those reading the older content and create what they want. In this case, the older content should remain unchanged but have a prominent link to the more relevant content. Now you keep that traffic to your site and know exactly what content marketing that new audience needs.
Conclusion
Updating old content is cheaper and easier than creating new content. It is likely already a good backlink profile, while promoting it increases the content’s ranking with search engines and indirectly your entire site’s ranking. Improving the search engine optimisation or social media shareability of the existing content could dramatically increase visibility of the content, while tweaking the content for conversions has a significant ROI for the effort. Finally, tactfully tying high traffic older content to new products can promote the latest offerings without having to alter the content at all.
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