6 Things To Do With Old Blog Content

Do you have old content on your blog and aren’t sure what to do with it?

Some old posts hold a lot of value for your audience but not for Google. Some have a little SEO value but don’t receive much traffic. Others aren’t optimized at all and don’t receive any traffic.

In this post, we list several ways to handle old content on your blog.

Why is old blog content bad?

Having old content on your blog can be bad for a number of different reasons.

The biggest are expectations Google and your readers alike have in terms of content being as fresh and up to date as possible.

If a blog post has a publication date that’s more than a year old, there’s a good chance that some of the content within it is no longer relevant.

A blog post may be evergreen, but you should still update its publication date every now and then to let Google and your readers know that the content is still relevant.

Plus, if your blog has a lot of old content that doesn’t rank well, you may want to reexamine your brand’s entire content marketing strategy.

What old content can you keep?

Keep old news articles on your site as well as their original publication and update dates. Update dates for news articles should only be changed if there was an update to the news stories themselves.

News articles likely hold very little SEO value once the news stories themselves are no longer trending, but you may get a little traffic from them every now and then when people search for the stories on Google.

Otherwise, you can archive news articles you don’t feel hold any value for SEO or your audience anymore.

This goes for news and announcements from your own brand as well.

You might want to create a central “Announcements” page on which you publish any announcements you have for your brand. That way, the page always gets updated, and you don’t need to create a new page for every little announcement you have for your own brand.

Why you should tread carefully with old blog content

Every old post published on your website has its own unique URL. You may have internal links that lead to this URL.

Plus, that post may have backlinks that link to it as well.

If you delete or archive old posts, you’ll create broken links on your site. When internet users click on any of these links, be it on your site or someone else’s, they’ll stumble upon your site’s 404 page instead.

You need to be really careful about how you handle links for old blog content because of this.

Set up 301 temporary redirects instead so that these links redirect to a new page, such as a new blog post you’ve created for the topic, your homepage or your Blog page.

Where possible, always try to redirect URLs to the next most relevant post/page. 

6 things to do with old blog content

1. Update it to add new content.
2. Promote it.
3. Rewrite it.
4. Combine it with another post.
5. Repurpose it.
6. Delete it.

1. Update it to add new content

The first thing you should do with an old blog post is read through it to ensure the information that’s already in it is up to date. Correct any information that’s outdated, or remove it if it no longer holds value.

You should also consider adding any new content you feel would be relevant to the post’s topic and changing any images that seem outdated.

This may mean adding hundreds and hundreds of new words to the post, but at least you’ll be covering the topic thoroughly. This will make it more valuable to your readers, which will make Google see more value in it as well.

Here’s a quick checklist to follow to optimize old posts:

• Find a better keyword to target, if needed.
• Update things like your post title, and SEO title/description. If you update a post’s permalink, make sure you set up a 301 redirect to the new URL.
• Fix factual errors in your post, and remove outdated content.
• Add new content as necessary, including images.
• Add internal links to other posts on your blog.
• Add internal links on other posts that lead to this post.
• Improve readability. This can mean making your paragraphs shorter and creating more sections.
• Update the publication date.

If you’re really unsure about what new content to add to your blog posts, use a content optimization tool like Surfer SEO, Frase or Scalenut.

These tools allow you to optimize articles for specific keywords. They do this by ensuring you mention certain keywords, reach certain word count lengths and insert the correct number of images.

Here are our reviews of these tools:

• Surfer SEO Review – Pricing starts at $89/month.
• Frase Review – Pricing starts at $15/month.
• Scalenut Review – Pricing starts at $39/month.

2. Promote it

Let’s say there’s not much wrong with the old blog post you found. Most of the information within it is correct and up to date, and it’s really well optimized.

In this case, you should still update the publication date, but your main goal should be to promote the post.

There are several ways to promote a blog post.

First, you should promote it to your email list. Hopefully, you’ve been building one. If not, get right on that, and start building your email list today.

Introduce the post in your email, and maybe even include a snippet of it.

The most important element to include is a button or link that takes your subscriber to the post. Hopefully, you’ve segmented your email list as well to improve the deliverability of your emails.

Social media should be another primary source for blog promotion.

You can create link posts for blog posts on platforms like Twitter (X) and Facebook, but this will result in very few engagements.

In reality, the best way to promote your blog on social media is to build your social media following organically.

You can do this by creating social media accounts for platforms your audience uses and by publishing original content for your niche.

To promote an individual blog post, come up with a few ways to turn it into one or more social media posts.

You can create longform videos on YouTube (videos that are five minutes or longer), short videos for TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels and YouTube Shorts, polls for Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, or even create a podcast episode.

Lastly, you can promote a blog post with a guest post.

When you publish a guest post, you’re usually allowed one external link that leads to a page on your own website.

Pitch a topic that relates to the blog post you want to promote but doesn’t directly compete with it.

If your pitch is accepted, ask if you can add a link to your blog post as an organic external link within the post content.

This is a link building strategy, and there are plenty more out there.

3. Rewrite it

If you find an old blog post that’s not very well optimized, doesn’t rank well and doesn’t match the standards you have for blog posts you publish today, consider rewriting it altogether.

Starting from scratch may be a much easier way to optimize the post and ensure the writing is consistent within it.

This is a good idea for articles that have a lot of referring domains.

If you were to delete an article with a lot of links, you run the risk of losing some of those links entirely. 

Despite what Google says, backlinks do matter.

4. Combine it with another post

Let’s say you have two old blog posts that relate to one another and even target some of the same keywords.

If they’re short enough, you can combine them or their topics into a single post.

If it’s too difficult to decide what original content should go where, scrap the posts altogether and rewrite them as a single post, but include both of their topics in the new post.

As for which post you should update and which one you should archive, choose the one that receives higher rankings, more backlinks and more visits.

Set up a 301 redirect for the post you archive so that when internet users try to visit it, they’re redirected to the updated post instead.

In short, combining two or more posts together is a great way to use old blog content and optimize the topics you covered.

5. Repurpose it

Okay, so you’ve found an old blog post and either updated it a little bit or completely rewrote it. What else can you do with it?

Well, you can take its topic and repurpose it.

This is what you’re doing when you create original social media content for the topic on platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

You’re repurposing the post’s content and using it in another way.

You can also create an ebook out of it, a podcast episode, an online course, and lead magnets like checklists and resource guides.

You can even create a follow up post for that post by coming up with a topic that relates to it.

6. Delete it

If you have an old blog post that’s not written well, is horribly optimized, doesn’t target any keywords or doesn’t hold any value for your audience, consider removing it from your blog altogether.

If your readers wouldn’t even find the post valuable, and it’s not ranking for any keywords, doesn’t have any backlinks and doesn’t receive any visits, your best option would be to just not worry about the post at all.

Make sure you delete it, not archive it. Archiving should be saved for posts that had value at some point.

Final thoughts

Keeping your content fresh is good for your readers and it’s good for search engines as well.

Maintaining your content will lead to more traffic, engagement, and revenue.

Just be sure to avoid being too hasty when deleting content. Sometimes it’s the best option but it really depends on the situation.