A Secret (& Simple!) Blogging Tactic for your content strategy in 2024

How to use old blogs for new leads…

When it comes to content creation, focusing on new and freshly updated blog content is undoubtedly the way to go.

BUT we wanted to let you in on a sneaky (& simple) secret… 

Old blogs can actually create new leads! 

Music to your ears, right?

It’s actually a bit daft to dismiss the value of your website's older content assets.

No matter how old a piece of blog content is, if it can regularly attract leads via search and contribute to your website’s lead generation activity, there is certainly still value in having it on your website!

Rather than simply leaving your old blogs to collect dust and passively accumulate traffic, we’d like to give you the secret which could increase leads, with little effort - win win!

The Secret: Historical Blog Optimisation!

Ok here us out! Historical blog optimisation is where you simply refresh old content to ensure it’s relevant and up to date. 

These blogs then have the ability to generate more traffic and leads than it already did. By “old" blogs, we just mean posts that are already there on your blog - whether or not they were written last month or three years ago - some topics are as relevant now as they were then.

Every blog post you create becomes a new page on your website, representing another opportunity for search engine indexing and the generation of targeted traffic. 

If you regularly produce top-notch, keyword-optimised content, revisiting and optimising that content can significantly boost your website's discoverability, its page authority in the eyes of Google, and its power to generate traffic.

Here we give you a few simple steps to get started:

1. Which of your older blogs are driving the most traffic?
Before diving into the process of optimising your older blog posts, it's key to identify which ones are already generating the most interest and benefit to your business…

As a starting point, delve into your Google Analytics data to find out which of your older posts are responsible for driving the most traffic. Collate a list of the top performing blogs and prioritise these.

Making improvements to posts that are already performing well will help you get even better results. You want to take your winners and turn them into world champions! 

2. How are visitors finding your blogs through search?
For visitors who stumble upon your blogs via search, it's key to determine the specific keywords they used to find you; keyword tracking tools will enable you to find out this information.

These specific keyword terms equip you with the means to fine-tune and enhance the content of your blog posts and the information within them, aligning them more closely with the needs and interests of your website visitors. 

For example, if your blog discusses content creation best practices, but includes a call-to-action promoting an unrelated piece of content, your conversion activity is going to be minimal - which is not what we want!

Not only that, you can take advantage of keyword tracking tools to boost your future keyword research, helping you identify additional, strong keywords that your older blogs could target, therefore expanding their capacity to attract more targeted traffic.

3. Optimise your blog posts based on your findings to drive conversions!
Now that you have the knowledge of the keyword terms searchers are using to find your blogs, you need to include those keyword terms in your calls-to-action. 

Remember to think about what the visitor wants and specifically how they arrived on your blog.

If you are promoting your blog via LinkedIn for example, posting: “Take a read of our latest blog post on top tips to plan your content” be sure to include a call-to-action in your blog post that provides website visitors with similar content they can download and convert on.

Also, from a design perspective, your older blog posts might have ‘text based’ CTAs – a plain text hyperlink, which in many respects, is not at all eye-catching or compelling. Update those CTAs to be more visually appealing and 'clickable'!

4. Refresh and republish!
Feather duster at the ready? Let’s freshen up your posts! One of Google’s most important ranking factors is ‘freshness’, that is, how up-to-date and relevant a piece of content is.

With this in mind, regularly refreshing and republishing your top performing old content is a simple and speedy way to satisfy Google – and generate more traffic to your website.

For example, we wrote a very popular piece about Digital PR last year that continues to get regular organic traffic. But since then, the Digital PR world has evolved (no surprise!), meaning the blog post is out of date. 

But, by updating that blog’s content to include the latest information, research, statistics and general updates, we can give the blog more informational value (which Google loves), increasing its organic search traffic and its ability to convert more visitors and generate high-quality leads for your business.

Also, you can use the keyword research you completed to find out how people are finding your blogs to target new, similar keywords – giving you more opportunities to rank on SERPs.

Finally, by republishing old, but now “new” content across social media and to existing email subscribers, you can amplify the distribution of your content further and generate more quality traffic. As your content reaches new audiences, it’s shared more and more, also giving you the chance to get some inbound links – another important search factor!

But remember, carefully consider whether or not you want to keep your existing URL or publish your content to a new one. When moving a page from one URL to the other, via a 301 redirect, there will be a decrease in your PageRank. If you have quality inbound links pointing to your current URL, perhaps consider otherwise!

We would only recommend changing the URL if the content did not have any quality inbound links pointing at it. And, if you were to change the URL, it would be to sneak a keyword in there!

Creating quality content is just the start. If you have older blog posts that consistently attract website traffic, consider refreshing them through the process of historical blog optimisation to ensure their relevance, search engine performance, and conversion effectiveness. 

This approach offers a simple, speedy and cost-effective means of generating valuable leads.