I’ve been blogging for over a decade now and I really enjoy the process. However, one thing I don’t like about blogging (especially if you blog a lot) is how easy it is to neglect your old content.
Picture this: you spend hours and days researching the topic and writing an article, only to never return to it after a year or two of active blogging. Only a few of my articles from all those ten years of writing keep coming back to me (they are still referenced by others, and I am reminded by following my name and seeing blog trackbacks). Most of my content goes to the blog archives, and I rarely, if ever, look at them again.
And most bloggers I know are like that. They are more focused on finding new topics and writing new articles than on analyzing whether they are doing their best to use what they have written in the past. And it’s really a shame: the content you wrote a few years ago is a huge asset. It has already built up some authority through backlinks over the years, and it can also bring in clicks. You may be just one step away from a solid increase in traffic. Or maybe you’re missing out on conversions because that older content doesn’t have the current call-to-action.
In either case, you should make old content optimization part of your monthly (or at least quarterly) blogging routine. You can boost your conversions without having to write a brand new article. Here are a few ideas.
1. Get more conversions for your best-performing legacy content
Have you checked your most successful content recently? Probably, but here’s a quick reminder: do it! And if you use Google’s Search Console, it’s really easy!
Go to:
Performance -> Click on the “Pages” tab.
You can also change the time frame to 16 months to get a better idea. The report lists your top performing pages:
From there, you can brainstorm the best way to optimize your top-performing content so you generate more leads without losing inbound traffic.
How ChatGPT can help:
Use ChatGPT to write your contextual calls to actions that will drive more sales or email signups. Here’s the prompt:
This is my article [COPY-PASTE YOUR CONTENT / GIVE IT YOUR URL]. I’d like more of my readers to do that [PROVIDE YOUR CTA HERE]. Think of 2-3 contextual CTAs that I can add to my content. Use the problem solving strategy. My CTAs should act as solutions to describe problems or answers to the questions included.
Here’s how you can use this prompt:
- Use your high-ranking content to drive more clicks to your “money” landing page. The easiest way to optimize your high-performing legacy content is to add an easily visible in-content link to your main landing page. This will also improve the ranking of your important money page, as internal links help pages rank higher in Google.
- Add an in-content call to action. Another non-intrusive way to add an in-content call to action without being too “salesy” is to use a two-step opt-in option. With a two-step sign-up, readers don’t see a form directly in the content and have to click a link to load it. This is a non-intrusive in-content conversion optimization tactic because it doesn’t force opt-in forms into the content and thus looks very legitimate.
3. Repackage your old content into images and videos
Diversifying content formats expands the marketing channels you can use to drive traffic and conversions. You can create useful visualizations/infographics and videos with your content by leveraging existing content and research:
- Create flowcharts, presentations, and/or visual quotes (if your content includes an expert)
- Create a quick video slideshow with the key points or steps from your content.
Visme is a nice tool that allows you to create both without having to install any additional software. It is also very easy to use:
New content formats also allow you to develop new channels, so make sure you always go one step further:
- Set up a YouTube channel. Even if you’re not going to publish a lot of videos or become a YouTube star, those videos will likely show up in Google and generate more brand awareness. This AI-powered YouTube channel name generator helps you create the entire YouTube brand identity from a single prompt!
- Set up a newsletter. Once you revamp your content and add more visual elements to it, you can actually repurpose it into newsletter content that you can send to your subscribers. That’s another channel you shouldn’t neglect!
Never forget to make your life easier with ChatGPT prompts. Here you can ask the following:
- Write an original YouTube video description (including tags)
- Create your newsletter content based on your article
4. Optimize your content again to drive more traffic
As you review your top-performing content pages, you’ll likely notice that some of your content isn’t performing as well as you’d hoped. It can still get you clicks, but of course you want more.
Save these URLs to learn what you can do to improve their performance, especially when it comes to URLs seek referral traffic. It’s usually there to stay.
You can also optimize your article for a group of keywords.
The first step is to analyze whether you are doing your best when it comes to selecting the most effective keywords. Do your usual keyword research routine based on each article topic and identify some phrases that may have some potential. If the topic isn’t too specific, you may want to cluster (that is, group) these keywords to optimize your content for multiple keywords.
Keyword clustering is the process of categorizing your keyword lists based on a more specific topic.
How ChatGPT can help:
Instead of going through your keyword lists and finding keywords to use in your article, you can ask ChatGPT for help. Here’s the prompt:
My article topic is [TITLE]. Here is my list of target keywords. Determine a keyword phrase that applies to this topic. Create a table with the following columns: (1) keyword (2) its search intent (3) a new section in the article that introduces it to my content.
Here are more quick SEO analysis ideas and here’s one too custom GPT for SEO which can provide a more detailed demand analysis.
It’s a great tactic to re-address your old content rankings and ensure your blog posts target a group of related keywords instead of just one. These powerful SEO plugins for WordPress can also help you optimize your legacy content more efficiently.
7. Reshare your old content on social media
Social media platforms help on many levels, not just through shares and clicks. They market your content over and over again, which brings in new mentions and links. Both help with rankings, building trust and therefore conversions.
How ChatGPT can help:
Instead of writing social media updates or captions from scratch, you can let ChatGPT create them for you with the following prompt:
Here is my article [TEXT]. Come up with five tweets, one Instagram caption, one Linkedin post and one Facebook post so I can promote it on social media. Add emojis and make each of these updates value-added rather than promotional copy.
You can also use ViralContentBee [Disclaimer: This is the project I co-founded] This is a free platform that gets your content in front of active social media participants. One of the biggest benefits of using it is that as long as you keep adding credits to your content, your content will be rotated over and over again, giving you new shares for your older (but still useful) content.
I have about a decade’s worth of content there, and I see it being shared to this day, driving constant traffic. Besides the obvious benefit (of making my content visible to more people who can link to it), these social media mentions also bring that content to my attention. This encourages me to update it if anything becomes outdated or to write a sequel.
Good luck getting the most out of your old content!
