A while back I was digging through some of the earliest articles I’d ever written some 12-years ago. My goodness did it make my skin crawl. Honestly, if the world could have swallowed me up in that moment I’d have allowed it.
But I had a laugh. You’ve got to right? I mean, we all have to start somewhere. Very few people are blessed with a natural gift and master their new craft immediately. It takes thousands and thousands of hours of pain-taking commitment.
It was certainly interesting to see how far I’d come. However, the question is: should you delete your old blog posts if you are embarrassed by them? Or should you update them instead?
Read on and we’ll explore it further.
Should you delete or update your old content?
In the context of the blog on your business’s website, it’s all about value. So the first question you have to ask when going over your old content is: Does this deliver value?
It may be tempting to completely sack off your old content, but often a few tweaks and improvements can turn an article around completely. That, and old content that has been established for some time and gets a reasonable amount of traffic is definitely worth holding onto.
Of course, if you have an old blog post that is so poorly written that it would take you less time to write a fresh article entirely, then it’s worth pruning the content and starting fresh.
How to update old blog posts?
With all of that in mind, should you decide to hold onto an old blog post and improve it, what steps should you take?
Here are some tips for updating old blogs:
- Consider combining multiple blog posts: this is particularly handy when you have several posts that cover similar subjects. You can cut down on content or keyword cannibalisation by consolidating the content in one ‘super’ post that is more likely to attract higher rankings.
- Understand the search intent behind your keywords: how well did you understand the search intent behind your chosen focus keywords when you wrote the accompanying content? Does the article meet expectations? When you better understand search intent, it will be much easier to tweak an article and make it more relevant to the readers.
- Add new and relevant statistics: especially if a blog post is a fair few years old, it may be worth seeing if there are any recent studies with updated statistics. What was true 5 years ago will likely have changed in recent years. Going back and updating stats with new, relevant sources is a great way to transform old content.
- Add video, images, and infographics: if the quality of the written content isn’t so bad, you can always improve old blog posts by adding new videos or infographics. Were you covering an especially complicated subject? Perhaps a clear, branded infographic can help your readers with their comprehension.
- Update the structure of your blog: how well is your old content structured? Did you make use of the appropriate headings and subtitles? Can you implement bulleted lists to make the content easier to scan and digest? Often, simply breaking the text up and making it more accessible is enough to improve engagement.
Conclusion: Update where possible
It’s always a shame to waste old content. Even if you are a little bit embarrassed by them, with a little work you can modernise and bring them up to your current standard.
However, as mentioned above, if the content is very poor and irrelevant, often pruning and making way for your fresh content will achieve better results.
No idea where to begin? If not, it may be worth outsourcing your needs to a marketing agency and let their writers handle the hard work for you.
This marketing agency in Singapore has a wealth of real life success stories from recognised brands which means they can help you transform your online presence too!
In any case, don’t be embarrassed by your old work. If it isn’t as good as you remember, then it stands testament to the fact that you have come so far; that the quality of your work has improved tremendously.
