Benefits of Updating Old Blog Posts

It hurts to see those neglected, old blog posts. Especially, when you know they were really good, but for whatever reason they got looked over. It should become a habit to revisit old blog posts at least once a year. The benefits of doing so are numerous.

Build Internal Links

The number one thing I see at successful blogs, is the amount of internal links embedded in blog posts. Sometimes when I stumble on a really good post, that is well linked, I’ll end up with 5-6 tabs of other posts I want to read, all linked to inside the body of that one post. Adding popular posts, featured posts, pagination, and similar posts to sidebars and footers work, but nothing beats internal links inside the body of a post for reducing your bounce rate.

One thing that might make life easier it to keep a list of all the posts in that category open, so you can quickly see what else you have written that may be worth linking too. Sometimes you forget what you have written, I know I do.

Freshen Up Out-Dated Content

Especially when writing about software, or web design topics, information can go out-of-date pretty fast. But it isn’t always beyond repair. A few changes here and there and your post will be relevant again.

It can also help to add an “Updated On: 01/02/03” at the top of the post so that readers know you are keeping up on this topic and the information is current and correct.

Pages Get Crawled

When you increase the number of internal links and make changes to these old posts, chances are they will get re-crawled by search engine spiders again. Now that your blog is a little order and hopefully a lot more popular, Google may favor these old posts with slightly better search results.

Check Links

Make sure all the internal and external links are still working. You don’t want to leave your readers stranded with nowhere to go. More information about finding and fixing broken links here.

Simple Updates

If you are going over posts from a year or more ago, chances are you have learned a lot since then. Try to add some quick little insights to freshen up and add to the content. Your readers will appreciate the effort and it may only take a few extra minutes per post.

Check Grammar and Spelling

Fix all those embarrassing grammar and spelling errors you missed the first time around. Never to late to improve your content and your image.

Since this blog is so new, I haven’t had the need to go back and revisit old content. If you have, what other techniques do you use, and have you seen any other benefits I’ve missed here.