Blogging Your Old Content: Power up the Past

by Angela Booth on October 2, 2012

Yarp

The WordPress Yet Another Related Post plugin

Blogs are wonderful websites because they’re so simple. All you need to do is create a blog, and start posting content. However, because the content is posted chronologically, your wonderful posts soon vanish into the archives, often never to be seen or noticed again.

Once you’ve created hundreds or thousands of posts, it’s a real challenge. How do you alert your readers to the treasures lurking in your archives?

Easy – just blog your older content, so that you get value from it today. Let’s look at some solutions.

Use a “Related Posts” Plugin

WordPress has many of these. Just add one of these plugins, and links to related posts automatically appear at the end of your posts.

Easy, yes?

While I was writing this post, I realized that I’d cleaned out my plugins for this blog, leaving me without a related posts plugin. Well, heck. Who knew? For some reason, I installed two of these plugins, and deactivated both.

Not a problem, I installed Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP), as you can see from the image above, and activated it.

A tiny digression: be aware that you can have too many plugins, and this can cause problems. They slow down your blog, and can also cause your blog to respond in unanticipated ways. So, although plugins are wonderful, review them regularly, and delete the ones you no longer need.

Update Older Posts

You can drag the past into the present, by updating older posts.

Some bloggers just repost older content, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If you’re scared that Google will spank you with a duplicate content penalty, just link to the older post, or update it in situ.

I usually just link to older content. However, I also like to update older content, adding fresh information to older posts.

Create Link Posts

I don’t do as much of this as I should. I think I’ll make a new resolution to create “what happened this week” or “great content you may have missed” posts regularly.

You should do the same. I know a blogger who owns a blog with over 5,000 posts. He spends one day a week reviewing his past content, and working revisions and updates into his workflow.

Even if you have a small blog, with fewer than 50 posts, you need to make the most of your older content; link posts are perfect for this. These posts also help with SEO.

What treasures are lurking in YOUR archives? Drag them into the present, so that your readers (and you) can get value from them.

Angela Booth

@

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