Earlier our guest authors shared about generating new traffic from old posts and powerful ways to repurpose your old posts, now our guest author Gautham shares his views about editing those old posts for search engines.
I was always skeptical about editing my older blog posts buried deep below the other posts. I always received mixed opinions and suggestions regarding editing my older posts if it would promote or ruin my existing organic rankings.
Is Editing Posts Safe for SEO?
Google loves updated content. Technology rapidly changes with time, content comprising facts and news dated years ago wouldn’t certainly impress your visitors. Eventually it leads to a higher bounce rate which can ruin your rankings.
Changing Permalink Structure without redirection would be a disaster while editing your posts. If you are using WordPress and using date in Post Permalink Structure, make sure you have a good redirection plugin before re-publishing the post.
Benefits of Editing Older Posts
1. Updated Content
As I’ve mentioned above updating your content to match the latest facts and figures would be a great move indeed. The ‘Top 10’ articles would cite a perfect example. I had an year old article on ‘Top 10 Social Networking Sites’ which I’ve ignored to update until a reader pointed out Orkut (Ranked Second) is drop dead.
It gives you time to Proofread your existing post and correct any grammatical mistakes and typos that may have crawled to your article.
2. PageRank Benefit
Although PageRank is considered virtually worthless to your blog, Google does consider it but gives a low priority in Search Results Rankings (SERPS), it is likely your blog has gathered some Authority and a good standing PageRank with time. Republishing enables your older posts to get featured on your homepage and most probably improves your SERPS.
3. Wake Up the Dead Posts
My recent posts get indexed and ranked virtually in seconds, while some of my older posts are barely even indexed. As I’ve already mentioned about PageRank and blog authority benefit above, revive your dead posts.
3. Keyword Trends
Not every keyword is evergreen, Especially if you are Blogging in the Technology and Gadgets niche, most of the keywords are fly by night. You couldn’t expect drawing traffic from the current keywords you are ranking now an year later. It would rather be smart move to harness the older post regarding the similar topic but targeting varied keyword.
It’s important to stay updated with current keyword trends if you want the Organic Traffic keep flowing in from the older posts. And most likely, you may not be SEO conscious during your budding days as blogger, you could edit and improve On Page SEO parameters and keyword placements.
4. Avoid Duplicate Content
Creating a new post and copy pasting content from your older posts to make minor tweaks could be a disaster. Google does penalize duplicate content issues on your own blog.
Furnishing your older posts could perform better than writing a new one regarding a similar topic. So why waste countless hours on writing.
5. Exposure
How many of your readers would dig into pages deep down to read your older posts. If you wish to let your avid readers take a look at an excellent resource you’ve published before getting your blog into limelight, then republishing is your thing.
Conclusion
If you are worried about putting your current search engine rankings in Jeopardy by editing your older posts, don’t worry it is perfectly safe for SEO. You could manage to save few hours and witness the benefits mentioned above if you can effectively use Republishing.
Let me know your opinions through comments.
This is a great idea to rewrite your old posts ,as a result it will make your posts SEO friendly and will keep your blog/domain away from Google Panda update Penalty. I do this once in awhile, I thought about going through some of the older ones that I believe would be helpful and plan to reschedule them or post them as newer blog entries. You should change the date to latest date..but don’t dig and bring the oldest article because the user may think you are lagging behind better to update the previous date.
Also, Interlinking old posts within the new articles will play a major role in proper indexing of those articles. It works most of the time. These old posts have good page rank, so we can share the page rank to other new posts. This will increase the SERP ranking also. I think Related posts and putting them on the sidebar is the best option to get them noticed.
Really this post will be of great help to make the blog look and behave like a website so that the good content remained evergreen. Thanks!
Hello, I have a keyword well placed on the second position at the SERPs, but it talks about an offer that has already expired. If I update it, changing most of the text, will I lose positions on the SERPs for that keyword? Thanks
Nicely said Gautham Nekkanti. Its always a priority to update your outdated post as its for SEO 🙂
Hello Gautham,
As asked by Praveen earlier, I’ve the same question, my blog have some really informative article. But keywords are placed in wrong sequence, so they are in 5th-6th position. I want rewrite the titles, what will be the SEO effect of doing so ? Rank higher or lower, or search engines will flag it as duplicate content ?
Hi Arnab, you can edit the article if you are improving the article. 🙂
If you have an article ’10 iPhone Tips & Tricks’, which you wrote on 2012, you can update the post with the latest tips and make it as ’15 iPhone Tips & Tricks’. It’s like you have improved the article further by adding updated information. This won’t be affected in any way and Google will try to rank it better.
I believe that editing old posts is good for SEO, but what about changing the date to a more recent one when updating old posts, is that ok?
It happened once that I revisited a post I commented on a year ago, and found that it is now one month old! That post has a SERP of 1!
for me it is indeed helpful. at least google is able to see that there is a movement or activity in your website.
great how-to list thanks 🙂
Is Publish the same as Update in WordPress. If you actually Publish again it will create Duplicate content? I have been planning on returning to edit a load of older posts and changing all images to larger files etc but unsure if the effort would be rewarding. Would time be better spent creating new posts. Also is there a Plugin which I can use to Publish the update to my social media feeds? Thanks for this 😀
Yes Publish and Update are some in some context, what you mean by it. If you are editing older posts, it doesn’t give you publish option. If you are having thin content, edit them for higher quality articles.
Whats the suggestion about updating old contents? I am running a recipe website. So updating old contents wont make any change because the preparation method is same. Will it create any difference? Whats your suggestion?
If the content is same, you don’t need to change mate. But, you can interlink old posts with new posts and vice versa. 🙂
i am updating my years old posts. hopeful for good results.
What if you republish a post and then just put a 301 redirect to the new URL? Do you think that would hurt SEO?
I don’t get your question mate? You can republish a post with the same URL I guess? Still if you want to redirect, I don’t think it’ll hurt SEO as long as the redirection works perfectly without causing any broken links. 🙂
Yes, as Pradeep said, why don’t you just republish with the same URL? However, i don’t think 301 redirect completely transfers the existing authority on that certain page. However, since both urls are on same parent domain, there won’t be any problem
Hi,
Im having a Job Site In which i used to update Latest Fresher Jobs Details ,My Blog is Clustered With Keywords like ” fresher Jobs,Qualification etc… ” i think this May lead to keyword Stuffing followed by Google Sandbox Effect ,Can i Delete my Older posts from my Blog in order to Prevent from Keyword Stuffing ? is this a Good Practice ?
Do check your blog posts for “Keyword Density” mate. If they are high, then you need to edit your blog posts to make it better. If you have very low quality posts, then it is better to remove them. 🙂
Useful: http://hellboundbloggers.com/2011/01/13/check-keyword-density-google-toolbar/
I really should take the time to improve my older posts, you’ve inspired me to take the final step in doing so, thanks! Could you expand on the redirect of old posts with a description date, is there a plugin for that?
“Changing Permalink Structure without redirection would be a disaster while editing your posts. If you are using WordPress and using date in Post Permalink Structure, make sure you have a good redirection plugin before re-publishing the post.”
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Are you referring to this mate?
You can try this simple ‘redirection’ plugin – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/
I have a doubt some the blog say that pinging google so many times harm your ranking but your post says that editing older post is good for SEO.Please let me know difference of both.
They are just baseless comments, Editing older posts absolutely poses no harm in Google PR or SERPS unless you change the permalinks or structure
Really,Awesome article.I like your thought of keyword trend.Now I will edit some of my old posts which does not get more visitors.Thanks for your post.:-)
I was always skeptical of updating my old post because I was afraid it might harm my SEO. But now that I’ve read this post, I’ll be spending the next few days editing my old post. Thanks!
Really Informative Article. I have one doubt. If we change the article title more than twice or thrice, will it ruins the Search Rankings? and is there any articles to know best about keyword placement. Thanks in Advance.
Changing your blog post title rarely affects SEO mate, suppose you have a post titled “10 Best iPhone Apps”, and after one year you want to add another 5 best apps to that list, so obviously you have to edit it like “15 Best iPhone Apps”, we are actually improving the post, so it won’t matter much.
For keyword placement, you can check this post: http://www.mywebschool.com/blog/seo/seo-tips-for-keyword-placement/
Hello Gautham,
I agree with your points and I have some personal experience in editing old posts and improving search rankings. Never forget old posts, try to add some new content to them or promote them via social media. Thank You.
Hello Gautham, I thought I was the only one that discovered the magic of doing CPR to the old posts. Also for those new to SEO, they will be happy to know that bumping and improving keywords in old posts is OK with search engines.
Article looks great, good job Gautham!
I think Its a nice idea to update our older posts. Atleast our content gets updated and quality increases for sure.
I will also think about it. Thanks Buddy!
Very descriptive article ! It really helped me about such doubt whether editing old posts affect on overall site SEO. Thanks.
Hey gautham, Glad to see you here.
Your article is very clear, Re- editing old posts can help to decrease bounce rate also. BTW: This time sure you’ll get PR3 for your blog 🙂 Keep working on guest posts.
Thanks bro, I hope I’ll get atleast PR2
Why not 🙂
I really think republishing old posts can help. It helps in many ways. People who didn’t read it before starts reading it. And additionally, republishing old posts give us a lot of traffic when we share them on social sites. Very good post from you, Gautam. 🙂
Thank You Avi, Yes Republishing is great to rekindle reader activity on older posts