Blog posts are like wine: the older they get, the better they become!
One of the lesser known things about any popular blogger is; that they spend as much time editing old posts as they do write new posts.
Particularly after the Google Panda algorithm rollout it’s essential to keep all posts of your blog relevant and up-to- date. Personally, Every month I update at least 20+ old posts to make the posts ready for today.
In this post I will list the reasons why it is so important to edit old blog posts, and the benefits of doing so. You will learn practical tips on how to keep editing your old posts & what other things you should take care along with it.
So let’s go ahead and first understand why you need to start working on your old posts now.
Top 5 Reasons for Editing Old Blog Posts:
Your blog could be a news blog, a tech blog, a fashion blog or a blog in any niche. Your visitors can land on any of your posts from search engines or via referral. If you have a post which might be a year old or more, it may contain information that is not currently relevant.
The visitor who lands on the outdated or irrelevant information will hit the “close” button and move on to other options. You just lost one valuable visitor who could have become your reader or even your subscriber. At the same time you also missed an opportunity to earn money. Moreover, your blog’s bounce rate will increase and the average time-on-site will be low.
By keeping your old posts updated, you not only turn a visitor into a reader or subscriber, but you also improve one decaying part of your blog. (And your blog is your personality, after all!)
Let’s look at the sorts of things that need to be edited in old blog posts, and why they needed refreshing.
Typos :
It is always important to proof-read an article to make sure that it is error-free. Most of the time we proof-read after writing a post, and then we publish it. When I look at a post that was written a year ago, and I sometimes find that they are full of silly mistakes, such as those related to grammar or spelling.
Typos are a big turn-off to anyone reading your article, and when you revisit your old posts and read them with fresh eyes after time has passed, you are more likely to find those silly typos. You can also use this free Chrome add-on call Grammarly to help you in proof-reading.
Here are few more resources which you can open in a new tab for further reading:
- How to better proofread an article in 6 simple steps
- 8 point checklist before hitting the publish button
Images :
“An image is worth 1,000 words.” I have followed this mantra from day one of my blogging career.
Back in 2009-2010, I used to use any image from sites like Flickr or other similar sites. Now it is important to me to have an image that aligns with the topic of my post. A relevant image will encourage readers to read and share the post on their favorite social media platforms.
Additionally, my old images are usually of excessively large (ex: 1024*768), and my post content width is only 670 Px. Having an oversized image also affects the loading time of the post as well as the search engine ranking. What I do now and suggest that other bloggers do is download the image and re-size it to the size I need for my post, and use ImageOptim (or another image compressor) to reduce the overall size of the post. The idea here is to make the picture web-ready.
Make sure you also rename the image to make it relevant and search engine friendly.
These steps will help you to significantly improve the overall SEO score of your post. You can refer to this guide to learn about how images improve the SEO of your post.
Additionally, if you have used a screenshot of a website or anything else in your old post, it might now be outdated. Adding a new and updated image will give new life to your old post.
So here is the takeaway:
- Add relevant images.
- Make sure images are re-sized and compressed before uploading.
- Take a new screenshot and use it.
- Rename the image to make it relevant.
Just to let you know, I use Snag it! For taking screenshots and editing them. You can watch this free video learn how to use Snagit!
Update with new information:
One of the reasons Google may penalize your site with algorithm updates like Google Panda is thin content. Thin content could be in any form as I have previously covered in detail here. If you have a post that requires an update of information, you should do it right away. Treat your blog like a store where only relevant things are displayed, and outdated things are thrown away.
If an article is completely outdated and its information is of no current use, you should no-index it or remove it completely. I prefer to remove such content. In fact, in the past three months I have deleted over 300+ thin content from ShoutMeLoud. That’s more than 11% of published content, and I have noticed a significant increase in the site’s search engine ranking as a result.
Moreover, when you edit your old posts, you link out to new posts, and this increases the internal linking of your blog and helps with improved ranking as well.
Search engine ranking:
Sometimes one of your posts falls among the first search engine results. Make sure to maintain and add more value to such posts to lower your bounce rate and increase the ranking of other pages. You can use a service like SEMRUSH or GA JS bookmarklet to find what keyword your post is ranking for, and further optimize and target your post for certain keywords. I do this often, and it helps me to drive traffic to those posts that were formerly sitting idle and attracting no traffic at all.
Recently I discovered Analytify that shows me Google analytics data as post edit sections, and this allows me to determine if the post in question is getting any traffic or not.
If your post is missing a meta description, you should write one and add it to improve the SEO score further.
You should also read these two guides to learn more about making your article SEO friendly:
- How to write SEO friendly posts in WordPress
- What are the factors for making your on-page score high?
Comments:
When you started your blog for the first time, you may have made the mistake I made by accepting comments that do not add value to your blog. Or perhaps you accepted some spam comments that are submitted by automated commenting systems. Once you re-visit comments on your old posts, you will find it easier to see those comments and at that point you should delete them.
Also, if there is any comment that requires a reply, you should add it to honor the commentator and reply. Adding a meaningful comment will help you to improve the value of the article, and it may allow the article to rank higher due to improved keyword relevancy.
Here is an article you should read right now to learn more about moderating blog comments:
Apart from all of the points stated above, your blog will become more credible with updated evergreen content.
Here are two resources which will help you to learn more about how to implement these concepts:
Suggested reading:
- How To Promote Your Blog (12+ Actionable Blog Promotion Techniques)
- How to recycle old blog posts for traffic and exposure
How often do you edit your old posts, and on what basis do you choose them?
Do you also delete your old posts or you just no-index them?
Share your working style with us, and remember to also share this article with other bloggers in your social networks.
Let’s one of my posts is getting good views from search engines, but I feel like there are grammatical errors and i can improve the quality of old post, how does it affect the seo of my posts?
Around a month ago I updated one of my post and also changed the focused keyword to another related keyword which has high search volume than old keyword.
But after a day I lost the ranking completely, earlier it was ranking on 1st page but after update there was no ranking of my post.
I had to revert back everything to old one.
Please explain about it.
Wow !!!
I never thought that this thing is that important , I used to just publish post and then done with it … never updated it ever …. Now i got to know the benefits of editing the old post ….old posts which already got search ranking and traffic can help new post also ..
Thnx bro !!
Harsh you are right blogging is like a game
no one want to end of this
great idea about posting
thank you for shairng
Hi Harsh,
I agree with you that editing in your old post is important part of blogging. I have experienced it before few weeks and it is working good for me.
As you mentioned in your post that you have removed around 300 post from shoutmeloud. So have you redirect that post to some relevant post or not. Redirection is beneficial or not?
Thanks
Dear Harsh,
Should we just make necessary changes to old posts & update them?
Or we should also change the date to current date & then update?
Thanks
I agree and have been following this to some extent too on my blog. I have a question reg SEO. Which SEO tool would you recommend for keyword research, analysis as well as link building? Thank you!
Use SEMRUSH tool. As it is more efficient than keyword planner in all respects. Also it saves time.
Hi Harsh,
Today due to this fast growing blogging industry, it become s more important for a blogger to edit and review all their blog posts on his/her blog regularly. It is helpful for both readers as well as for search engine prospective. As it makes the search engine (i.e. Google) to give more visibility to a website which updates regularly as compared to one which updated weekly or monthly. But, in my opinion as a blogger we should also try to make the content of blog more informative and useful, then it gives more benefits in long run.
But, finally thanks for sharing this useful post.
I agree of adding images to the blog as it increases your site value and ranking. But one thing I want to ask that while editing an old blog post, there may be a chance that we might change the interlinked topic. And when a user click on a link, he would get an error. Then Is it right to update old blog post or should I just change some content without changing the interlinked topic?
I also want to add that adding self made video will also make new readers and subscribers. Thanx Harsh for a great valuable post to get at safe side from Panda as well. 🙂
Brilliant article and extremely helpful. I’m a food blogger and I just know I have a tonne of posts that have very little in the way of content and/or keywords. In fact my number one most visited post has about 200 words. I’ll be on this tonight I think. Probably one of the main reasons I’m not ranking very well. I have improved a lot in 3 years, though. All a big learning curve for us I guess. Thank you for the advice
@Adnan
It’s endless learning curve & more important keep undoing many of the stuff. It’s like a Game which is never going to end. Best of luck with editing & make sure you do it with all other posts in timely manner. I hope you notice a positive difference in the coming days.
Hey Harsh
In the starting days of my blogging, I did some mistakes like writing article with 100-200 words and one image that too with wrong SEO techniques, so should I delete those article and set a request on webmaster tools to remove their links from the search engine?
@Karan
Read this post as you will find answer to all your queries in one place: https://www.shoutmeloud.com/how-to-find-low-quality-content-fix-create-quality-site.html
After reading this article. I have started adding featured images to my article.
Thank you very much for sharing such a great post with us.
Harsh, I always liked the way you stress that editing old blog posts for visibility and quality is important.
Hunting blog posts that have little or no traffic in WMT and updating them for better visibility helps a lot.
Coming to comments, the easiest way to filter out comments that don’t return valuevtopi the future visitors, is to delete generic comments that are applicable to all sorts of blog posts. Like, even a long blog comment like,
I’ve been reading your blog…. Blah blah…
Your blog design is awesome … I eespecially liked this post.
Wow what a cute way of deceiving the webmaster and anti spam Plugins!
Editing older blog posts, and deleting these sort of comments helps a lot.
By editing older blog posts to better, you will not regret later for the mistake done when you were a newbie.
Thank you,
Cheers,
Akshay Hallur.
@Akshay
Wow I liked your meaningful comment here and you are absolutely right with your views. Editing old posts have more advantage than one can think of, but the only limitation is it takes time and one get in that though loop of: Should I work on new stuff or edit old stuff. What I do is; give a ratio of 70:30 for new: old posts.
Thanks for dropping by and adding value here.
This is blog that i am following from last one month and believe me Harsh you have inspired me very much. Every time i come here i get some valuable knowledge about blogging and your writing style always brings a smile on my face. I want to call it a clever style of writing, i am calling it clever because you force us to read your article by providing various valuable links. If a reader doesn’t clicks your link then you force him by generating curiosity inside him like in this post you have given a link “This useful wordPress plugin”, which means a wordpress user will definitely going to click this link to see which plugin is this. Overall great post .
Happy Blogging !
🙂
@Amit
Thanks for dropping by and I’m glad you find my articles and writing style worth mentioning. I will also share one tip here which might give you an idea of why I interlink so much.
One of the advantage is SEO value
But the biggest advantage is reader gets to dig down more and learn more. I always imagine I’m writing for someone who is new and what are the questions one will have while reading the content. Wherever possible I add links so that the reader would be able to have a complete knowledge about the topic they reading.
Happy blogging! 🙂
I never use to add images to my posts, until you mentioned it to me. Now I try my best to add images to make it more appealing and it also looks better.
ohh..m mising the images in my previous post…will be adding few asap…thnx for the article..
Yups true… old posts are like old wine the more it is old the more it is famous.
@Himanshu you are right, we always need to have a quick look at the most trending keywords and then we need to add them to our old post to make them more efficient and better in search engines.
I have images to my posts as a thumbnail, may be i need to add a few within the post to bring more life into them…
I only have a few posts being updated to make it more search engine friendly, after looking at the keyword stats. I should’ve doine it more often!
As blog related to Java, often my old blogs go out-dated. In such cases, I usually go and update my posts. But, I’ve never tried adding images to my post, since it’s pain to search for the opt images.
I never use to add images to my posts, until you mentioned it to me. Now I try my best to add images to make it more appealing and it also looks better.
I agree with all your points and might have to start going back to previous posts to update them.