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:
- Updating Old Posts on Your Blog – how and why.
- Interlink Your Old Blog posts
Watch this video at full size on Youtube at How to Get People to Read Your Old Posts.
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I do it in two ways. I use the related post plug-in, and I also link to my older posts where ever appropriate.
But reading and listening to your post made me wonder, how would you go about re-posting your old post? I mean wouldn’t you be creating duplicate content ?
We all know duplicate content and penalty for it is a myth(at least in the way that most people think of duplicate content). However there is one situation that duplicate content penalty applies to, and that is having the same content twice or more on the same domain.
I dont know if I am missing something or …
I really would appreciate it if you could elaborate on that a little and explain more about re-posting old posts(if you have time for it of course).
Thank you for the post.
Love this post as it was just was I was working on right now. Thanks for the help.
devin
I have been asked to be a columnist at Elephant Journal, and they love content, period! They specifically do not mind having old content from my blog, and there are many topics that I have written about which suit them fine. So I publish there and link to the original post. It’s new for that audience and brings a few hits back to those posts, not to mention I go through them again for accuracy and clean-up!
what I have been doing of lately is more of related link.
Let say If I am talking about topic Á and that topic A is related to previous blog post than I will try to create a link within the blog post itself.
Great post Darren. I really wanted to find out how you do this and this video has really help. your contents are so so inspiring.
thanks so much.
This is great… I have often wondered how I go about getting people to read my old posts
The related posts wordpress login has been great for me. I’ve found that the traffic stays steady on my older, well-written posts.
thanks for the tips. The related post plugin has helped a great deal on my blog.
Love your ideas! Epecially the “Best of” ideas.
I re-purpose my blog posts into white papers and handouts at seminars. Some people really like to hold onto paper – this helps build credibility offline. Many of the handouts are just excerpts that direct them back to the blog post.
I’ve found that just asking is the best way. It seems to have the most immediate response.
Granted, some posts just are not controversial enough to warrant comments. If you are writing about a pretty straight forward issue, people might not be as inclined to comment.
If there is a little controversy, that usually gets the ball rolling.
Also, if you are doing a “how-to” post, those tend to do well if you encourage people to post questions in the comments. However, you are then somewhat obligated to respond…which you should be doing anyway.
What I do is just go on is.gd and shorten old URL’s and then post them on Twitter. I have found that it is a fantastic way to gain direct traffic sources, and I always find plenty of fresh comments and opinions from readers the next day (even if the post is two months old)!
ALSO, check out Linkwithin, a plug in which is awesome for displaying visual related posts. No other plugin I have found has matched its looks or click through rate.
I also optimise each and every web page with a niche title and niche description. loading the content with keywords and after a few days or weeks get found for loads of highly specific search terms across Google.
Anyway check out linkwithin dot com and take a look :) dunno if Problogger has covered it but they should ;)
Hmm.. Interesting. I’ve just started a blog, and, since I haven’t currently got any posts old enough to have me worrying about this, I haven’t thought about it before. It’s good to know for the future, though. Thanks for the information – I might as well start using it early. :)
What I had done so far is to link back to older posts in new posts and doing a best posts session at the side bar. You tip to re-post older posts is what I have been wanting to do but thought that readers may be put off with the re-posting.
I would also find related discussions and use the old posts as canned answers that you can link to in your comments and also submit them to bookmarking sites and submit them to article sites if you haven’t yet.
I think reposting should be done with care to make sure your visitors are not put off by old content. Check dates, references, links inside articles, etc.
Great ideas. My blog is fairly new, so I am not in need of those ideas yet, but I’m sure next year will be a different story.
thanks!
If it’s appropriate you can also create inline links to older posts right there in the content of newer posts. This is especially helpful in guiding readers to older posts without relying on them to click a related article in the footer or sidebar.
This blog is very informative. I would look into trying some of these techniques for some of my blogs.
Kind Regards,
Samantha
X
One thing you don’t mention is linking to old posts yourself from within new articles. It becomes a challenge to remember what you’ve got to link to, of course, but it does add a lot of value to newer posts, and helps with SEO, too
Very good tips, i always thought how to make people read my old posts, but now I have a new blog, so I will use the ideas for this time..
Thanks a lot.
Hi,
thanks for the tips.
I don’t have actual content on my site. So in order get readers to view my old posts, I use Twitter. I tweet the old post and name it a “Classic”.
Hi Darren,
I always wondered how could I ever attract visitors to my old posts and these suggestions are really helpful. Also, it is important that when posting, you make sure you make every post worth reading as if it is not, readers will not likely to go back. Write like there’s no tomorrow.
Hi
Im one of newbie on the list. And I face the exact situation. Am looking forward to your next post.
I would retweet old posts, or if I use forum I would put the link and title in my signature, maybe use random posts so that posts randomly shows on a section of the blog so all posts rotate.
As a blogger I tend to think of my archives as useless. However, there maybe a really good post that you may have written and I think it would a good idea to link back to it.
If it’s a good piece of content why let it go to waste? I also like the idea of updating old posts and adding more to that particular piece of content.
Great Tips!
– Jay
What a fantastic post!!
I’ve often thought about this in the past and now I have some ideas!!
Fantastic stuff mate…..brilliant!!
Great ideas. I started my Daddy blog 4 months ago. I had a lot of energy (and still do) and put a lot into my early blogs (and still do). I’d hate to think no one will ever see the adventures I wrote about early on.
I’ll be using these ideas soon.
Thanks
–DiggyDaddy
Great post. I often resurrect posts years later. It works, if you know what you’re doing.
I just let the search engines do the work. If the content is good and your SEO is good then old blog posts should always attract visitors. Good internal linking will help as well. Maybe a top list of your favorite past entries.
I often re-post it the old articles and I get reviews,it works for me.
Great tips. I think that it’s also important to update your Best Of page from time to time so that you’re best material is reflected.
thanks for the post. It’s long i’ve been thinking on how to get visitors view my older post, since i know many visitors hardly use the option of searching on my blog. Now i think, making use of some wordpress plugins is a must.
Some good ideas here about re-sourcing old blog posts. Thanks. I will occasionally send links of old posts to friends, colleagues and relatives if the subject is related to a recent conversation we’ve had or something in the news.
Cool post – not something I have thought of yet as my blog is fairly new. I have been referring to old posts where applicable in new posts. Will try some of these techniques.
I like the best of too.
Every now and again I just gather up five or six of posts I’ve done that I like for one reason or another – these seem to be well received too…
Favorites by category is something that hadn’t occurred to me, thanks
I went back to a few of my old posts based on google anaytics data and made a change to the title and description to optimize to the higher trafficed keyword and bang – sudden jump in traffic for that post
Bloggers who are not willing to put forth the effort will not succeed.
So guys and gals, roll up your sleeves and get to work. Create more inbound and outbound links, refresh your old posts by giving them a new title and perhaps a few new sentences here or there, optimize your sites (blogs) with better targeted keywords and keyword phrases.
Bloggers who are not willing to put forth the effort will not succeed.
Some great suggestions.
I’ve always tried to concentrate on bringing traffic to my old posts and here’s what I’ve done with a moderate success.
– Linking from new posts to old ones.
– Added a Most Popular Posts widget in my sidebar.
– Always used the Related Posts Plug-in that has many other benefits as well.
– Came back to old posts to add more content to them.
– From time to time I use to share old posts with my lists of subscribers, and via several social networks such as twitter, digg and stumble upon. It does wonders.
– Building links to your old posts will always help to rank them higher in the search engines so I guess that’s a great idea as well, a bit time consuming but it’s well worth the efforts over time.
Evelina
I love the idea of reposting old content, but if you do not change the beginning part, will that cause your google ratings to go down since it is similar to a duplicate post?
Thanks for this, as I am in the middle of writing a post about keeping the home page short (instead of scrolling on and on) and I can definitely reference this video in that post.
Cheers,
Tia
BizChickBlogs.com
Great read, i just made a related posts section and its really working out. i will try the others you recommended. Thanks for sharing.
nice podcast..thanks!
I believe good content will always attract new visitors even in years to come.
Terrific, now we can recycle previous posts that are still relevant to present time. We do need that now on our website specially that we have an upcoming live forex trading seminar in Sydney. All the blog posts that we have kept on going down when a new post is added. I like the idea of retweeting old posts.
Hi Darren this is my first day on your blog and I must say your story so far and your posts are really interesting as well as informative I haven’t read this much any day of my life and also watched 10 to 20 videos from your youtube channel.
It great too see you always trying your best to emphasis on the point that blogging is not a get rich quick thing for which I definitely would like to thanyou.
I love blogging too but when ever I start any blog I always start reading content related to bloggers through blogs like your and whenever I read that “Blogging your way to fame is not a cup of tea” then I get a bit discouraged but it ok unless I start reading something like this from many other sites too. The increasing number to such incidents have led to, many a times, pulling me away from blogging trust me I have created and deleted more then 12 to 13 blogs and I guarantee it no one in here might have heard or even read about me.
At the moment I have 4 blogs which I had stopped updating since 1 year ago here are the names you may add the blogspot(dot)c.. yourself
1)Blogater
2) GalleryLog
3)2hottrends
4)creatures4u
No I am not thinking of getting them on track again but I would appreciate if you could help me with some suggessions regarding the blog designs and other stuff.
I find the related post plugin to be helpful… or as you suggested, Darren, it’s better to hand select posts and manually ad them in there yourself.
I may have to look into a plugin that highlights my best articles because for a long time I’ve been wanting to find such a plugin and include it in my sidebar.
Great video Darren, great tips!
Jarrod
I know someone who uses an outstanding way for driving traffic to his old posts, every year he posts most of the year’s archive under the title:
“The best tips for the year XXXX”
and there he links to more than 40 old posts!
The secret is to make sure the content is high quality and not just filler. This way people will become returners!
So true!! A lot of people think that quantity is more important than quality when writing blog posts and that just isn’t the case.