Episode 4: The Content Undead (Remix)
Revisiting and Repurposing Older Content
Today I’m revisiting and repurposing some content that’s about a year old on this show. Why? I’m traveling part of the week and won’t have time to put together a full episode. Also, it’s Halloween, and last Halloween I released an episode of my previous podcast series Super Space Robot that’s still quite useful and relevant.
If you are a content creator you're bound to have this problem. Over time, you forget about stuff. It drifts away, out of sight, and out of mind. Nothing is ever really dead on the internet. All that old, long-forgotten content remains indexed by search engines and findable by people, by bots, and by who knows what else.
What Should You Do With Old Content?
How do to uncover all of this old content? You should perform a content audit. Content audits are often overlooked by content creators for good reason. We are always focused on making the next thing that we rarely take the time to look backward. Sometimes you have to look to the past to build a better future. As cheesy as that sounds, auditing past content can be vital for identifying gaps in your current content. What content is too old? What content is irrelevant? What content should be removed? What content should be revived and updated? Content audits help you determine what is out there already. That helps to save you time in the future.
Spot Check Your Content to Find Some Quick Wins
The problem with a content audit is that it takes a long time. It can take weeks or even months to complete in some cases. I'll go into more detail on the content audit process at a later date. For now, though, I recommend a tactic that will take far less time: a content spot-check. This tactic does not help you identify content gaps. It doesn't uncover all of your content. It does, however, help you to get some quick content wins by finding and updating the old content that still gets traffic.
Start with Analytics for your Content Marketing Spot Check
To find older content that is still getting traffic, use your analytics tool of choice. This may be Google Analytics, but open up whatever system you use to track your performance. Use date ranges to find older posts: 1 year old, 3 years old, or 7 years old. What do you consider to be old? The age may differ based on your channel.
Once you've got a list of older posts, cross-reference them with whatever metric you currently use to define content marketing success. For today, we'll use page views, but that might differ for you.
What did you find? If your channel is anything like mine, you probably have some old content that's still generating traffic, but is not entirely relevant to what you're doing now. If your data shows that you're getting a ton of hits on this older content, but not a lot of engagement on your new stuff - you might have found some content worthy of updating.
One more thing on this: you will want to figure out what is causing you to still get traffic. In most cases, it's probably the title or some metadata attached to the content or an image. Perhaps it's a specific keyword or key phrase found in the content. You should also look at where the traffic is coming from. Perhaps you have a great inbound link from another website. In that case, you want to make sure to keep that page and its URL working properly. On the flip side, it could be linked from a disreputable page or one of those weird internet directories. In that case, you might consider breaking that link and making some updates to your Google Search Console (but that's a story for another day).
Once you've got that all figured out, you can go to work on updating the post.
Review and Revise Your Old Content
Once you've got your content candidates - or "Content Undead" as they're referred to in the episode, your next step is to take action. For today, we're going to assume that the content is still getting good, legitimate traffic based on your research and that you want to keep it. Bring it up to date. Tie it in, if it's relevant, with some other, more current content. Consider that it might be relevant to a current world event, or something that is going on right now in your industry. You can use that as a jumping-off point for making updates. You can also use it as fodder for social posts promoting your newly refreshed content.
Update Your Call to Action
All content you create should be created with a specific purpose in mind, and the last step to achieving that purpose is by creating a clear and relevant call to action (CTA). This is a good time to make sure a call to action is present, and that it still serves the originally intended purpose. If it doesn't, update it.
What do you want the reader, viewer, or listener (depending on the type of content) to take away from this content?
Do you want them to be intrigued to learn more? If so then you might add some related content.
Do you want them to reach out to you or subscribe to your newsletter? If that's the case, you might link to a contact form.
Remember, your CTA should have a clear path, which means you should only have one per content asset. Don't confuse your audience by giving them too many options.
Focus On the Details
Just like that, you've rescued some of your old, forgotten content. But wait! There's more. Don't forget to update metadata such as keywords, descriptions, SEO titles, image tags, and more - just be sure you keep the ones that might be responsible for driving the traffic. You may also want to check and make sure your media licenses are active and you still have the rights to images displayed in the post. Perhaps there are other embeddable assets, like videos and infographics, that can enhance the content. Treat this like you would a new asset. Don't forget the small stuff.
Benefits of Updating Old Content
We covered this when discussing the content audit, but even updating a few older posts can have substantial impacts on your content channel. It can help the health of your website by minimizing resource usage. It can help your audience find what they're looking for more readily through Google and your channel's search functionality. It helps Google to index your content. From my point of view, the main benefit is that it can save you from recreating the same content over and over. Why start fresh when you can update what you already have?
If you don't have time for a full content audit right now, do a spot check. Hunt down the big content monsters that are lurking in the dark corners of your content channel, and bring them back to the world of the living.
Alice Cooper
Halloween Playlist: 13 Alice Cooper Spooky Halloween Favorites
I can’t think of a more Halloween appropriate rock & roll artist than Alice Cooper. Here are 13 songs I’ve chosen that are some of his creepiest. They’re perfect to put on this Halloween season. I've linked to the playlist on both Apple Music and Spotify.
No matter what time of year you’re reading or listening to this, Happy Halloween!