How to Recycle Old Content efficiently?

Most bloggers are focused on finding new topics and writing a replacement article than analyzing if they’re doing their best to utilize what they wrote within the past. And it’s a true shame: the content you wrote a couple of years ago maybe a huge asset. It's already accumulated some authority through backlinks over the years, and it's going to get clicks too. You may be one step faraway from seeing a solid boost in traffic. Otherwise, you could also be losing conversions because that older content doesn’t have your up-to-date calls to action.

In either case, make old content optimization a part of your monthly (or a minimum of quarterly) blogging routine. You'll boost your conversions without you having to write down a brand-new article. Here are a few ideas.

1. Brainstorm Ways to Get More Conversions for Your Best-Performing Old Content

Have you checked your most successful content recently? You mostly have, but here’s a reminder: do it! And if you employ Google Analytics, it’s very easy!

Go to:

Behaviour > Site Content > Landing pages

Select “Source/Medium” as a secondary dimension, and increase the number of rows to a minimum of 100 to have a far better picture.

From there, brainstorm the best methods to optimize your best-performing content so you generate more leads but not lose incoming traffic.

The secondary dimension will assist you to come up with the foremost suitable conversion optimization option. For instance, if you see [organic traffic] as the referral traffic for a specific landing page, you'll want to feature your primarily call-to-action (search traffic converts well in most cases). If you see that StumbleUpon sends clicks to at least one of your blog posts, your safe bet is to assume those are lurkers, so give them the simplest CTA you'll come up with (e.g. one-click email check-in, Facebook page like, etc.)

2. Use Your High-Ranking Content to Drive More Clicks to Your Landing Page

The easiest method to optimize your well-performing old content is to feature an easy-to-notice in-content link to your main landing page. This may also improve rankings of your important money page because internal linking helps pages rank higher in Google.

You can even automate that internal linking (and save time) by using this plugin that links any word to your chosen page whenever it finds it in-content. The plugin hasn’t been updated for a short time, but it works fine for all my blogs. You'll set it to link just once per page (in case that word is employed several times within one article) which are some things I usually do to avoid linking too much:

3. Add an In-Content Call to Action

Another pretty non-intrusive technique to add an in-content call to action without being too “salesy” is to use a two-step opt-in option. With a two-step opt-in, readers don’t see a form right within the content and need to click a link for it to load.

The two-step opt-in option is predicated on the concept known in persuasion psychology as a “foot-in-the-door tactic”, which suggests that when users click a link inviting to sign-up and download, they feel more inclined to truly convert.

Saying yes to a little request (e.g. clicking the link that invites to subscribe or download) predisposes you to mention yes to a much bigger request (e.g. to fill the form and opt-in).

This is a really popular in-content conversion optimization tactic because it doesn’t force opt-in forms inside the content and thus looks very legit.

4. Add Your CTA to Visuals

You already use visuals within your articles. Why not make them a part of your conversion funnel? Images catch the attention, and adding a fast CTA won't hurt their visual appeal. Here’s an excellent tutorial on adding more actionable context to your images.

5. Re-Optimize Your Content to urge More Traffic

While you're there rummaging through your best performing content pages, you're likely to note a number of your content not performing also as you’d hope. It's going to still get clicks, but you naturally want more.

Save those URLs to explore what you'll do to enhance their performance, especially when it involves search referral traffic. That one is typically there to stay.

6. Optimize for a Group of Keywords to Diversify Rankings

The first step is to research if you're doing all of your best when it involves selecting the foremost effective keywords. Run your usual keyword research routine based on each article topic and identify some phrases which will have some potential. If the subject isn't too specific, you'll want to cluster (i.e., group) those keywords to optimize your content for several of them.

Keyword clustering is the process of categorizing your keyword lists by a more specific topic. Topvisor may be a useful tool for understanding the concept of keyword clustering. It organizes overwhelming keyword lists into groups, giving me a transparent overview of topics that will be united into separate categories. It’s an excellent tool to form a sense of your niche queries helping you brainstorm content more effectively:

It’s an excellent tactic for re-addressing your old content rankings and ensuring your blog posts target a group of related keywords rather than only one. These powerful SEO plugins for WordPress also can assist you optimize your old content more efficiently.

7. Use DrumUp and ViralContentBee to Bring Fresh Social Media Shares

Social media platforms assist on many levels, not just shares and clicks. They put your content out there, again and again, driving fresh mentions and links. Both help in rankings, building trust, and, thus, conversions.

DrumUp may be a social media management platform that supports Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. My favorite feature is the ability to rotate Twitter shares for my articles to schedule them weeks and months ahead. For instance, prefer to re-publish any tweet 30 times every 30 days, and you’ll see it in your feed monthly for 2 years. Of course, you'll set how often and the way repeatedly you would like the tweet to travel live:

ViralContentBee is a free platform that puts your content ahead of active social media sharers. One of the most important benefits of using is that, as long as you retain adding credits to your content, it'll rotate your content, again and again, bringing you fresh shares to your older (but still useful) content.

Designate has consistently increased conversion rates for its clients by engaging the most sophisticated metrics and tools to acquire, engage, and convert target audiences across domains. Get in touch to know how we can boost your ROIs.

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