How to Update Old Blog Posts for SEO
We tell every small business owner who’ll listen that having a blog is essential for boosting a website’s SEO, and it’s one of the best ways to establish yourself as an authority in your industry.
If you want to read about why you should have a blog on your website, check out our blog: 4 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Blog.
We’re also huge proponents of working smarter, not harder. We know keeping up with a consistent blogging schedule is hard work. (We’ve published a new blog every week since the start of 2023, so we know firsthand that it’s not always easy!).
For many of you, one of the best ways to work smarter is to update old blog posts for SEO.
If you’ve got a backlog of old blog content that could use a refresh, then read on. We’ll show you how to use this to your advantage to rank for more keywords and get Google to love your website.
(And if you’ve never blogged before but want to get started, this post is all about how to optimize your blog post for SEO before you write it. So head there to read on first!)
Why Update Old Blog Posts for SEO?
First, some basics. Why put in the time and effort to do this?
Is it necessary? No. Can it make a huge difference? Oh, yeah.
Plus, your content is already there. With just a few simple updates, you can give it new life – so why not?
1. Google loves updated content.
Any time you publish content on your website, Google will see it, crawl it, and index it. After that, Google will continue to crawl and index your content regularly to check your updates.
This means that if you go back and update old content, Google will see it and take note – and it loves websites that prioritize keeping content up-to-date.
2. You can use your old posts to rank for SEO keywords.
Many business owners we work with like to blog to share their opinions, unique approaches and thoughts. We also LOVE this because, beyond SEO, this can be a great way to share your values, what makes your business unique, and help establish your brand as an authority and thought-leader in your space. Yet, even with blog posts that’s top priority isn’t findability or SEO ranking, you can still optimize them for SEO and make them SEO-friendly! There may even be an unknown opportunity to rank well for these types of blogs or any old blog you have, but you first have to intentionally ask the question, “Is there an opportunity for this to rank on Google?”
No matter what the topic of your old blog, if there’s a great opportunity for it to rank for certain keywords your audience is searching for, why not use that to your advantage?
3. Making a few simple changes can make a big difference.
Did you know that something as simple as cleaning up your URL slug can make a huge difference in how Google sees your website? Low effort, high reward. Here. for. that!
Have we convinced you yet that it’s worth a little effort to revive the content you’ve already put energy into creating?!
Keep reading for exactly what to do and all the simple tweaks to make!
8 Steps to Updating Your Old Blog Posts for SEO
1. Figure out which blog posts to update.
Before we dive into updating old posts, we’re going to do a little audit of your current content. If you’re stuck trying to figure out which blogs you should update first, here’s what we recommend:
First, look for blog posts that may be providing outdated information or statistics that need to be updated. For example, say you’re a contractor in San Diego and the blog you wrote last year about the new ADU law that passed is now a little out of date. This is a fantastic opportunity to go in and update the post to include the newest information
Next, plug your domain into a research tool like Ubersuggest (what we use), Semrush (also what we use), or Ahrefs. Look for blog posts that are ranking outside of the top 10 positions on Google.
Finally, you’ll want to identify the blogs that aren’t ranking at all, we’re going to try to fix that with the steps below!
2. Perform keyword research.
This is the most foundational piece of blogging for SEO – researching and choosing a solid SEO keyword for your blog post.
SEO keywords are the words or phrases that people type into the search engine bar to find content. You’ll want to find and choose one SEO keyword/keyphrase per blog post that you’re updating. This is what we call a “focus keyword.”
We’ve written a deep dive into what SEO keywords are, how to perform keyword research, and our favorite tools to find good keywords in this post, but to summarize:
1. Head to UberSuggest and type in a keyword or phrase that describes what your blog post is about. You get three free searches per day with the free version!
2. You’ll be redirected to a page with keyword ideas based on what you’ve typed in. To evaluate the quality of your keywords, we’re going to use two metrics:
+ Search Volume - the number of searches for this keyword per month
+ SEO Difficulty - a number from 1-100 that tells you how competitive the keyword is to rank for
3. You’re looking for a keyword with the right balance of high search volume and low search difficulty.
Once you’ve found the right keyword, it’s time to implement it into your blog post!
3. Implement your SEO focus keyword in the correct places.
Your focus keyword should be in these places for each of your blog posts:
The blog title: Edit your blog’s title to include your focus keyword or phrase. (i.e.: our focus keyword phrase for this post is “update old blog posts for SEO.” So, our title for the post is “How to Update Old Blog Posts for SEO.”
At least one H2 (heading 2)
The first 100 words of your copy
Wherever else it makes sense in your copy (but avoid keyword stuffing – just work in the keyword where it feels natural! Google is smart and doesn’t like keyword stuffing.)
The file names of images on the page: Google sees the names of all the files on the page, so work your keywords in there, too. (i.e.: our image file name for this blog is “update-old-blog-posts-seo-hoffbeck-co”)
The alt text of images on the page: Alt text is a text description of an image on your page so that people with visual impairments know what the image is of. Here, you’ll want to describe each image (while adding in your focus keywords). For example, alt text for this blog image is “an image of a laptop open to the Hoffbeck + Co blog page | update old blog posts for seo”.
The post’s SEO title: This is the title of the page that people see in the Google search results. Make sure you incorporate your focus keyword here, as well as your business name. For example, the SEO title for this post might be “How to Update Old Blog Posts for SEO | Hoffbeck + Co”.
+ To update this in Squarespace, hover over the page name in the sidebar and click the gear icon. Then, navigate to the SEO tab and find the spot for your SEO title. Make sure to account for character limit!
The post’s SEO description: This is a 1-2 sentence description of what your blog post is about. It appears below the SEO title in the Google search results. Again, make sure to account for character limit!
4. Look for opportunities to link to other related blogs.
Internal linking (or deep linking) is when you link to another blog post or piece of content on your website. For example, if you like this post, you might also like our Ultimate Guide to SEO for Squarespace. Guess what? That’s an internal link!
You can also use links to your advantage by linking out to external websites with high domain authority. Remember when we linked to UberSuggest above? That can actually help this blog post rank higher in the search results – just make sure that external links are set to open in a new window so you aren’t leading users away from your site.
5. Compress your images.
A HUGE factor in how much Google likes your site? How fast it is!
Google hates slow websites, and a big killer of website speed is large image and video files.
You’ll want to make sure all the images in your blog post are 500KB or smaller. If it means deleting and re-uploading a compressed version of the same image, then do it!
You can start by adjusting the size of your image in the Preview app on your computer. Open the image, then click Tools > Adjust Size. If the height or width of the image is greater than 2000px, we decrease it to 2000px. Then, we head over to an image compression website (we use tinypng.com), upload the image there, make sure the file size is smaller than 500KB, and then upload it to the website.
For videos, it’s better to directly embed the video into the page instead of using a YouTube or Vimeo link to add the video to your page.
6. Fix the formatting of the post.
Next, you’ll need to make sure your post is formatted for SEO best practices.
The hierarchy of your heading and paragraph styles is another thing that’s important to Google. Google loves websites that are structured in an orderly manner.
Squarespace gives you four heading options: heading 1 (H1), heading 2 (H2), heading 3 (H3), and heading 4 (H4). You should only have one H1 per page, and on blog post pages, this should be your blog title!
You should only use headings in the correct order. Meaning, don’t skip from an H2 to an H4 without using an H3 in-between.
You can also look for opportunities to make your blog post easier for people to skim. For example, if you’ve written a big block of text, try to add spaces in-between to break it up and improve readability. Ideally you do this in a consistent way throughout your blog posts so there is visual consistency throughout your blog.
7. Update the blog’s publication date.
When you update old blog posts for SEO, should you change the publication date?
YES!
It’s a simple change that can have a big SEO impact.
Remember how we talked about how Google crawls your website? The first time it crawls a blog post, it takes note of the date and time it was first published. When you update old blog posts and change the publication date, Google sees that and compares it the previous times they’ve indexed it.
Because we know Google loves updated content, it’ll see that you care about making sure your content is fresh and up-to-date – and reward you for it.
(Don’t just update the blog’s post date without changing any of the content of the post, though – Google is smart and sees right through that!)
8. Make sure Google sees it!
Google will eventually re-crawl your website and see that you’ve updated your post without any effort on your part. But if you want to speed up the process, you can request indexing of your blog post by submitting it to Google Search Console.
If your site is set up in Google Search Console (instructions on how to do that here), all you have to do is paste your post’s URL in the URL inspection tool to request indexing.
Optimizing Old Blog Posts: A Simple Way to Boost Your Website’s SEO
When you’re already putting in the effort to create valuable content and get it up on your website, you absolutely want to make sure those efforts are maximized. So, if your old blog posts have not been optimized for SEO or need to be updated a bit, use this list to guide you and get in there so you can get better SEO results for your website!
Get the most out of the content you’ve already written by updating your old blog posts for SEO.
As always, if you get stuck or have any questions about SEO, we’re here for you! Schedule a Call (it’s free!) with our team, and let’s talk about how we can help get Google to ❤️ your website!
More soon,
Mara
WEBSITE DESIGNER + COPYWRITER + SEO SPECIALIST
P.S.
Subscribe to get our weekly blog with marketing, business, and finance tips dropped straight into your inbox.
