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5 Tips for Getting Readers Viewing Your Old Blog Posts

Posted By Darren Rowse 2nd of March 2010 Video Posts 0 Comments

Over on Twitter last week @JapanNewbie asked me about how to get people viewing old posts on your blog once they drop off the front page. In this video I tackle the question with 5 suggestions including using:

  • Best of Sections
  • Autoresponders
  • Related Links
  • Best of Posts
  • Repost Old Content

I’d love to hear your suggestions on how you drive people back to your older blog posts?

Related Reading:

Watch this video at full size on Youtube at How to Get People to Read Your Old Posts.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. i need this to make my blog more better. thank’s

  2. If your Blog is a news or information type site try Old Post Promoter. Does not work for chatty type sites or dated posts.

    Randomly choose an old post and reset the publication date to now. The effect is to promote older posts by moving them back onto the front page and into the rss feed. This plugin should only be used with data agnostic permalinks (permalink structures not containing dates).

  3. I just spent 30 minutes on this one post, going through the comments, and learned so much from you and your readers! Archive competitions, the Link Within widget, linking to old posts in new ones, re-purposing content — these are the tips I’m going to use.

    By the way, I like the blog format you used for this post: 5 short tips, and a video if you want more. You got me to stick around WAY longer than I had scheduled. LOL!

    Michelle Quillin for New England Multimedia and Q Web Consulting

  4. i experimented this idea and worked out very well, especially i earned reasonable amount of money from Adsene

  5. I’ve just been working on this issue, so I was excited to see this post. Several commenters have mentioned LinkWithin, in one case saying it wasn’t working. I have it, and it’s not working right. It shows the same 5 related posts for everything. I sent an email to the support team about the problem but haven’t heard back. Any suggestions?

  6. Thanks Darren for another great post. I have been linking older posts in my newer posts for now. I think I’m going to add a related posts feature the the footer of my posts now.

    Thank you,
    Melissa

  7. Repost old content works only when those are evergreen posts. I dont see any advantage if the blog is a news blog. I will probably rewrite, rather than getting links to old content.

  8. To get attention for your old post you can create a new “Best of…” digest post of them, with links and short descriptions of five or more old posts you want to get noticed. As a new post this will create internal links as well as accomplish your goal. Do this once a week.

    You could also create a Best Of page featuring older articles you want noticed.

  9. Adding related post feature is the best in my mind now to get readers viewing old blog posts. One other way is to highlight best old post in a category such as the “all time best of problogger” or “never miss this” etc.

  10. In reading so many blogs, oftentimes the best content I find is when I take the time to dig through old content. Thank you for the tips, especially the round up of best posts over a designated period of time. Also – what do you think about collecting the best of or categories of posts within an ebook?

  11. As many have mentioned a related post feature is a good way to go. I was once suggested to add a “recent posts”-type of widget that posted random posts from the entire blog. Very nifty, however it didn’t fit my blog type at the time. Unfortunately I’ve misplaced the brain cells that remember the name of it, but I’m sure with a little Googleing it should be possible to find.

  12. Adding related post feature is the best in my mind now to get readers viewing old blog posts. One other way is to highlight best old post in a category such as the “all time best of problogger” or “never miss this” etc.

  13. Yeah, I’m addicted to – and dependent on – a “related posts” widget in order to get readers looking at older posts. I also update an index to a large portion of my work, organized by topic.

  14. All those seem valid ways to get people to read the old posts but not too sure about republishing old content. While it may seem alright if the visitors have not read it, you do have to think of the ones that did. I love related post plugin and it’s the best way to make sure your old posts get read. SEO the posts too, it may help!

  15. Great post. I think linking to your old posts also helps loads. This is one thing that keeps people coming to old posts.

  16. Hi Darren,

    I got many valuable ideas from your video post.

    There are several things I can add to what I’m already doing.

    I link to my older posts that are relevant inside the new posts.

    I also use a relevant posts plug in.

    I’ve heard of reposting old posts with some updating but I always worry about duplicate content.

    Vance

  17. Great tips Darren.

    I especially like the best of idea and the posting a new date on old posts and editing them just a bit. That would be an excellent way in case you can think of something brilliant that you could add to something old to really spice it up a lot and make it great for the future.

    Awesome article here.

  18. Thank you for the advice. Very useful for bloggers to be able for his or her write in their blog remain readable and searchable by visitors.

  19. I agree with Adib’s idea. Thanks for your idea

  20. You could try out one of thes:

    – “Want to know what I was writing about on 3rd March 2010?” and so on and so forth – the date exactly a year back or maybe 2 years back.
    – Most popular Blogposts of March 2009

    Different readers get excited about different things – the above could work with readers inclined towards ‘history’ or the ones who ‘don’t want to waste their time on sifting through posts to find out which were the ones that really worked’

  21. Create a section called “One year ago” and every day post a link to a post you made exactly a year ago. I have been thinking about doing this from a long time. Never actually got to do it. :(

  22. Thanks for your sharing. In fact, it is really a difficult thing to let people view my old blog posts because I don’t have such a habit.

  23. Hi Darren –

    One question – I need help with the last tip – reposting. If I repost, the post would go up with a new url. How do I repost with the original url — so that I can get a “refresh” online of that url. I use WordPress. Is it as simple as changing the “publish” date and click “update publish”?

    I don’t want to “experiment live”, since my RSS readers would see the results :) — so thanks to Darren or anyone here for an answer.

    Btw, I love Problogger – I just started my blog less than a year, following your tips — and it’s taken off very well! If only I had more time on my hands to implement everything you put out here. :) LOL.

  24. I have put widget on my blog linking to some old post, so that my reader can see the old post, next I sometime retweet or share on social media sites.

  25. Thanks for these tips, this will be very useful as we continue to develop our blog. Once question though, as a relatively new blogger, at what point should you start referencing your older posts? We have about 40 now, with categories clearly marked for various topics. While I have referenced past posts when doing a series (3 part or 5 part), when can or should we start doing this? Is our blog mature enough to warrant this? Thanks.

  26. There is a great plugin called WP Old Post promoter that takes care of this..it lets you schedule in advance and choose specific posts w the ability of hiding the dates too ;)

  27. great ideas! We are in the process of adding a blog.

  28. I thought blogging was supposed to be like a recent news sort of thing. If this is the case, then who cares if anyone reads the old posts.

    If you were building a blog like Steve Pavlina, then I could see it. His material is pretty much timeless. You can read it any day and for the most part it still applies. Most bloggers aren’t like that though. They talk about current events.

  29. Amazing stuff. I tried waiting for readers to get old interesting posts

  30. Thanks for these tips, this will be very useful as we continue to develop our blog. Once question though, as a relatively new blogger, at what point should you start referencing your older posts?

  31. I use a related post plugin and it works good!!!

  32. Too good! I do not find anything you missed.

    Got an idea after going through video. Take 4-5 blogs related to one topic. Make a summary of each blog and post it as a fresh post with links to relevant posts.

    Hyder
    http://www.winwinmantra.com

  33. I didn’t start the best of post yet, But I will. As for the autoresponder, I am already using it, and it works great. It’s good to send your subscribers to your blog so they can read a case study or the best posts.

    Frank

  34. Hi Darren,
    We have a simple way of getting people back to the old posts.
    We make up our newsletter from the best blog posts and then it has a double whammy effect.
    1. We get it out by email to those who haven’t read it yet and
    2. Off the email everyone comes back to the site to read it.

    Have a look at some of our old ones if you’d like to get a feel for it
    http://www.onesherpa.com/news

  35. I love the idea of a best of section. I think we meed more time to post (posting history) but I will definitely be rolling that into the site in a future release. Thanks as always Darren!

  36. “Best of” posts seem like a great idea.

    People are always looking for the best of and worst of, so why not capitalize on your archives to resurface some of the good ones.

  37. really? this is good. I also see some old posts in google search how about that?

    What I do is RE-bookmark my older posts, would that be okay?

  38. I try to refer back to things I wrote about in previous posts and link to them within my new post. It seems to work. I think people click out of curiosity.

  39. Yes I really agree with you. As per the points which are given here are works very well and give very well results for the blog specially for the old blogs.

    Thanks,
    Chris.

  40. Re-posting old posts sounds like an interesting option

  41. My question. How will Google view such reposts? Will one be penalized for duplicate content?

  42. Is there a trade-off between writing a fresh post and updating old one? Does it not take the same amount of time? And the results–are they worth it?

  43. Very good tips. I think for my internet marketing blog the best way to get people visiting older posts is to update them since internet marketing is in a constant state of change. Having a related section will probably also help.

    Kris,

  44. Wonderful post I must say. Provides a lot of useful information and sounds like a smart idea. Re-posting an old post is certainly useful as some sites/blogs tend to archive and delete posts after a certain date.

    Keep it up

    Mark

    http://www.plr-king.com

  45. My Blog is quite small in content – some 26 posts so far. What I do at the moment is to tweet each article on a regular rotation on Twitter. This certainly helps my CTR.

    I will adopt suggestions in this article and from comments.

    Many thanks,
    Steve

  46. I’m just now looking into increasing my blogs traffic after blogging for over a year. I don’t know that any of my earliest have actually been seen.
    Does re-posting the same stuff really hurt your Google rankings?

    Brent

    [email protected]

  47. would this involve any duplicate content issues?

    Just curious

  48. Great video tips Darren. I liked the ideas. I actually recently added a related posts plugin to my site. Within two days my bounce rate cut in half and my “average time on site” doubled. Within a week the average time tripled. I’ve also seen an increase in visitor loyalty. It’s only been a month but I’m glad I added it. I plan to put into place some of your other ideas and see where that goes.

  49. Thanks for the great advice Darren, hopefully some of it will me to help get more people reading http://howtohelpnow.wordpress.com/

  50. Darren,

    I posted here when I read this article and implemented some of your suggestions… within 4 days the number of pages per visitor on my blog went from 1.7 to 2.1

    Thanks for such great advice.

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