Historical optimization can revitalize your content and boost traffic by a significant amount. Don’t forget that it’s a very cost-efficient tactic as well. Read on to learn which posts you should optimize and how.
No one today doubts the usefulness of having a blog for marketing their business. However, it’s also a well-known fact that running a blog is both difficult and costly. In order for it to be effective you need to pack your blog with top-quality content. HubSpot reports that blogs with 16+ new posts a week generate 3.5 traffic as opposed to 0-4 posts. Historical optimization is a content marketing tactic that can help you re-purpose old content to produce better overall results. This technique is highly cost-efficient because you won’t have to create new content but optimize the posts that you already have.
Case studies show the incredible power of historical optimization. Giving your old posts an upgrade can boost traffic flow to them by over 100%. This means a significant increase in leads at very little cost. To make the most of this opportunity, you need to choose posts that have the greatest potential and optimize them in the correct ways.
Which blog posts are best for historical optimization?
- Old posts that already provide a lot of traffic, also known as compounding blog posts. Optimize them to improve for search first.
- Posts that are over a year old. At this point, they are already indexed and shared as much as they would ever be. If they aren’t generating much traffic now, you’ll need to rework them completely in order to offer more value which is relevant at this time.
- Outdated posts that require an update to remain accurate.
- Posts that have potential which you have yet to realize. These are the posts you’ve worked hard on but which don’t perform as you’d like. Better optimization might fix the problem.
- Posts that are already ranking high for snippets. You need to make sure that these are high-quality and detailed.
Bear in mind that historical optimization tactics only work for blogs that have enough content in their archives to re-purpose it effectively. More importantly, you need to have a good traffic rate before you start re-purposing your old content in this manner. If you don’t better optimization for old posts might help increase your traffic by a bit, but the effect will be very limited.
Tips for most effective historical optimization of blog content
- Educational content usually generates the most traffic long term. However, methods of presenting this kind of information do evolve with time. Check out the latest methods of writing for educational purposes as recommended by experts. Apply them to your current educational articles and be sure to remember these tips when working on new original content.
- Today you need to optimize blog posts for voice search. This means using different types of keywords. Voice search requires keywords that are long-tailed and usually made out of sentences or phrases instead of a word mix with bad grammar. For example, compare ‘best lawyers New York’ and ‘Who is the best divorce lawyer in New York?’
- Capitalize on ‘freshness’ by adding information about new industry developments to your old posts. If they are already good, you may only need to include a new section with the description of a new study or tool relevant to the post’s topic.
- Upgrade the quality of visuals in the post. There is always room for improvement in graphics, so don’t forget to make your posts more visually attractive as well as valuable.
You should always publish historically optimized blog posts as new to have them indexed. Promote them as you would any original post. If it’s one of the compounding posts, which already have a good reputation, consider mentioning ‘updated’ in the title. You can also post a link to the original right in the body of your new article.
Final Thoughts
Historical optimization is an effective marketing technique that can drive your traffic up at a minimal cost. Analyze your blog performance data to pick the posts that will provide the best results when optimized to fit the times. And don’t forget that it’s not only text that should be revamped. Use the latest perfectly optimized page checklist to make sure that your upgraded blog post is the best it can be.
