Earlier this year, I blogged about how to audit your web content, and today I want to look at how to repurpose blog content that may need a refresh or is worth pushing to the top of your feed with new thoughts. In essence, this post is a repurpose of a post about repurposing!
Inspired from this article from Yoast, I set out to get a handle on my ten years of blogging and 125+ posts! You see, just because you blog about something once, doesn’t mean you can’t give your thoughts new life or break down complex subjects into more digestible bits. Maybe you’ve got old content that was applicable at the time but now, not so much. Perhaps your opinion has changed about something.
If you make minor changes…
If you make minor changes to a post, you can simply click the “Update” button in WordPress. The Last-Modified date will change and the Publish date will stay the same.
If you make major changes…
If you’ve completely overhauled and revised the post, you can change the Publish date to the current date. Just be sure to delete any old comments if you don’t mention that the post has been updated. Otherwise, comments that are older than the post date will look strange.
Don’t do this when you repurpose blog content
Don’t simply copy the old content and publish it which would create two posts on your site with duplicate content. Google does not like that and will ding you for it. If two posts exist on your blog about the same topic, make sure they are different enough.
Posts I repurposed include:
- How to evaluate your web content (This content is still useful. I updated it with new findings and changed the Published date.)
- Tools I LOVE, every day (Originally published in 2014, I added new tools— including a shout out to my Client Onboarding Toolkit—and I changed the Published date.)
- Affirmations this freelance web designer lives by (This post was 8-years-old but still very relevant. I added affirmations I created since it was first published, and I changed the Published date.)
- Website planning: Are you doing these two things backwards? (This content is as true today as it was four years ago. I removed all references to 2016 that were in the post, and I kept the original Published date.)
Reasons to repurpose blog content
To recap, tweaking old content and re-releasing it is great when:
- You’re running out of new ideas (here’s 8 Tips to Find Blog Ideas)
- You’re running out of time
- You want to put a new spin on a topic
- Your copywriter is on maternity leave
I’m participating in Melanie the Marketer’s Blogust Blogging Challenge, so repurposing this post about repurposing content is a no-brainer so I can get the last of my four posts published for the month! And done!
