What does it mean to update old blog posts? Well, you can spruce up your blog posts the same way you spruce up your home.
How should you begin?
You want to start by figuring out what your most popular blog posts are, and you can do this by checking out your stats with Google Analytics, which is a free tool. After that you can work backwards by publication date.
For example, a post that was written in 2008 that listed various types of marketing methods might have a paragraph about MySpace. Obviously no one’s using MySpace anymore. That can be taken out and new info about Pinterest and Instagram can be added in.
Add New Photos and Graphics
Add a Content Upgrade
Next, you will want to add an opt-in form for a content upgrade. A content upgrade is a Freebie of some sort. It can be a video or a checklist or resource list, something that you offer at the end of your post in exchange for someone’s name and email address.
Ideally, you would create one content upgrade to match each of those categories. Anytime you write a post about kitchens you offer the content upgrade about organizing a kitchen pantry. Anytime you’re writing a post about organizing bedrooms, you offer the content upgrade with tips about organizing bedrooms, and so forth.
Do Some Keyword Research
Publish Date
Now let’s talk about the publish date. You’ve worked really hard on refreshing your blog post. You can keep the original published date on the post, or you can update the publish date to the current date, or schedule it to post on a future date.
If you decide that you want to update the publish date to the current date, you want to delete any previous comments on the post. If someone’s looking at it and see the publish date was the same week that they’re reading it, but they see comments on it from 2012, that is going to be weird.