By Princess Jones
If you’ve been running your business website for any significant amount of time, it stands to reason that you’ve got a fair amount of content on your hands. But in a world where headlines whizz through our Twitter feeds, it sometimes seems like the shelf life of content is less than it ever has been.
But the truth is that a large backlog of content tells readers that you have experience. It says that you are established. And it says you have a lot of information to share with your audience. Older content can continue to bring in eyeballs and clicks for a very long time if you work it out right. Consider these options when reviving old content.
1. Re-optimize
Depending on how long you’ve been running your business blog, some of the content can be fairly old. And since search engine optimization best practices can change quickly, it’s worth it to take a pass through your old content with a new eye for SEO. Consider changing titles to more search friendly phrases and upgrading your keyword density.
2. Link Back
An easy way to breathe life back into your old posts is to link from your news ones to the old ones. Not only will this strengthen your site’s SEO optimization, it will also lead curious new readers to older posts.
There are a number of plugins designed to make this process easier but it’s baked right into the current installation of WordPress. All you have to do is highlight the text you’d like to link to, click “link,” and choose from the relevant posts that pop up on your screen.
Many business sites lend themselves to evergreen content. Let’s say your catering company puts up content with event tips or recipes. That type of content has the same impact over a number of years. So instead of letting it die in the archives of your site, try using a sharing plugin to revive it. The plugin will tweet or post old content at set intervals with the hashtags you choose ahead of time. Two popular options are Revive Old Posts and Bufferapp, depending on whether you’re looking for automatic or manual sharing.
4. Roundups
Older content is stronger if you can group it together with similar posts. Consider gathering it into roundup posts based on popular topics. You can have a “Getting Started” roundup of informational content about your product. Or a group of customer experience testimonials in a “What Our Customers Say” roundup. Or a roundup of recipes for that catering company’s blog I mentioned earlier. For the best results makes sure to link to these roundups in a prominent place, like a header or a sidebar.
5. Book
You can take the roundup idea one step further by putting together an ebook of your most useful content. Take a popular category on your site and compile older posts into a collection of work. Selling it might bring in some passive income and promote your website. But since it’s previously published content, you might get more traction giving it away as a promotional item. You can use that free gift as a way to drive email newsletter signups or memberships.