If you have been blogging for a year or more, you would realize that any old post is a bane for the blogger. If one has blogged about a trending topic, it is no longer in vogue. If one has talked about some beauty tip, one would like to make sure it reaches every new reader who joins the blog. And, so on. So, how does one make sure that all those previous posts receive equal viewership as well?
Granted that some of your old posts would be a legend and come what may, the traffic to those posts would always remain unbeatable. You would love to see those numbers for your current posts as well but somehow that never happens. That may be simply due to the fact that you have inadvertently placed great many number of keywords in those posts!
If you think I am speaking latin and greek, please excuse me. In laymen terms, once you have written and published the post, your responsibility with the old post is not over. You should consistently modify it and update it so that it is fresh and consistent with your current blog layout.
You must have already noticed my two previous posts, they were the long forgotten ones lying in the archives! In fact, they were the first two posts when I had started blogging. I had been thinking since quite long that I should bring out those posts again but could not find out the best way to do so. It was then I came across the simple tip of republishing the blog posts by changing the time stamp.
This ensures that your old post has been published as new without changing the URL of the post so that any backlinks to the post are not lost! Also, this ensures your readers get to read the things which they might have missed out on or have not come across since they have joined the blog!
But, doing this has one major disadvantage. Your blog layout and blog language might not remain same. If the post which you would republish is very old, like in my case, the language and the structure of the post would be very very different. At that point of time, you have two action items. Either rewrite the entire post, update it or create a new one. Or, edit the post with your current thoughts about it and publish it as it was. And, any changes you might have regarding the post, create a new one and give a backlink to the other post.
This way you would have created new content for your blog and the inter-linking among the blog posts helps boost the page rank. Ok, I have to say this that reviving the old posts might not be the best thing in the world. Why? You might actually get bored editing it or you would be shocked by how raw you were in your hey day!
What do you think? Does republishing your old blog posts really help?
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Great tip, Swati. I am a bit confused about some of the things you have written, since I am quite a bit technologically challenged :D. Will ask you about that once I have been able to understand as much as I can on my own.
hehe…sure 🙂