How To Update Your Old Blog Posts For More SEO Juice

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How To Update Your Old Blog Posts For More SEO Juice

Did you know that SEO drives 1000% more traffic to your site than just relying on social media? (Source: Hubspot Marketing Statistics)

The good news is there is more to SEO than just writing new content that’s SEO friendly.

You can actually take your older blog posts and update them – and that’s what we’ll be talking about today.

Here’s how to update your old blog posts for More SEO Juice:

1. Find The Blogs That Need The Help

The first thing that you’re going to need to do is to find the actual blogs that will need the most help with SEO.

To do this, you’re going to want to use a tool called Google Search Console.

Google Search Console will let you look at your posts and see how they have done over time.

When you see a blog that used to get a lot of views and clicks and now gets a lot fewer, you know it’s a possible blog to update.

Similarly, if you see a blog that you thought would do well, but ended up not doing well at all… definitely put it on the list!

The blogs you aren’t going to want to update are the ones that continue to do well over time.

Here’s a video tutorial on how to use Google Search Console:

 2. Update Old Bad Links

Any blog article you write is bound to have some links in it – links that go to sites that are not yours, that is.

The issue, however, is that sometimes the sites that are there even a year ago might not be there today…

And it’s not like the owners of the site send out emails notifying people that they have plans to take down their site.

When you have the time to update your site, check to see the links are still working.

Search engines like Google can tell when your pages have bad links and push them down in ranking.

3. Add Media

Many years ago, people who made blogs tended to make them more about the words than anything else.

Because of how quickly people can get online now compared to then, it’s a lot easier to add media to your blogs.

This can include things like images as well as videos — though in most cases, the videos will come from other sites like Youtube.

You’re going to be dealing with people who might be reading your blog from their phone.

You have to make sure that you don’t use images that are too big in size… or people won’t bother waiting for them to load.

4. Replace Old Media

Of course, it’s possible that your older blogs might already have images in them, but how good are they?

It’s worth taking the time to look at the blogs and deciding if the images that you are using are okay.

You should also make sure that you use alt tags for all of your images to help out with SEO.

For more about using alt tags with images, check out this video:

5. Change The Year In The Title, Where Appropriate

One of the simplest ways that you can update your old blogs is to change the year in the title. Additionally, you’ll need to update the material as well.

For example, if one of your older blogs says that you have kitchen color ideas for 2019, you can change that to 2022, but not for a blog about 2019’s color trends. It won’t work just to change the year, as the content would no longer be accurate. So, then what? Keep reading…

6. Make Sure The Content Is Year Appropriate

Again, you need to make sure that when the year is changed, the content keeps up with it. Are there new and improved methods? Or can we just update the year?

To use our example from earlier, your kitchen color trends from 2019 aren’t going to be the same color trends in 2022, so don’t change the year here. Instead, link the old content to the new color trends of 2022. That way, people can still read about color trends from past years, but also have a handy link to fresh content for color trends.

7. Do Not Change The URL

Lastly, what should you never change with your older blogs? — the URL.

Of course, not changing something might be a lot easier than changing it, but it’s worth knowing why.

Search engines have your blogs tied together with the link that either you created for it or that was created for it.

If you change the link, the index with your blog link will become incorrect and need to be updated.

This will mess with the search engine ranking for your blog articles, and defeat the purpose of trying to update them for SEO. You’ll lose all that past SEO juice!

 

If you want to focus on painting and spend less time stressing about your blog posts having high SEO qualities, we can help!

DYB Virtual is here to help you create blog posts regularly, whether you want a couple of blog posts a month or more.

Just click here for more information about how DYB Virtual can help you with your blogging needs.

 

Quick Recap:

1. The first thing you need to do is to find the blogs that need the help and remember – not all old blogs need to be updated

2. Update Links on your blogs -they may lead to sites that don’t exist anymore

3. Add media as this is one good way to boost your search ranking

4. Wherever you have a blog that has media that could be improved, replace the old media with better quality media

5. Change the year in the title and tags to bring the post up in terms of relevancy, after you’ve updated the content, as well

6. Make sure that the content stays year appropriate, meaning your color trends of 2019, stay in 2019, but can link to a new article for color trends in 2022

7. Changing the URL will throw off search engines and hurt your ranking – do not change the URL!