SEO Tips: Increase Page Rank By Revitalizing Your Old Posts

June 26, 2007 | By Lorelle VanFossen | Filed Under Blogging, Features

A little publicized SEO factor with Google’s PageRank is the issue of updating old posts.

A webmaster/blogger who pays attention to their blog content, updating and fixing old posts, is one who cares about their blog and their blog’s content. Google’s PageRank algorithm tests to see how often a web page is updated and the length of time between changes in a blog post’s content.

It makes sense, too. If you work hard to bring the best content to your readers, then you would want to make sure that the old content continues to have life and vitality. Google wants to honor those who honor their blog content.

Here are some tips to help revitalize your old posts for your readers, as well as to help your search engine page ranking.

Link to Old Posts: Want to revitalize an old blog post easily? Just link to it. A new incoming link drives traffic to it, as well as search engines.
Add Intrasite Links: Go through your old posts and look for opportunities to link from within the post to other related posts you’ve written more recently.
Write It Better With Keywords: Now that you understand the importance keywords and search terms play in helping your blog content get found on search engines, go back and rewrite the content with more and better keywords.
Rewrite and Update Information and Blog About It: Posts which are popular or have timely information worthy of updating, can be updated and fixed, then bragged about. If you make big improvements, point to them in a new blog post to let people know you are working on old material to make it better. It also helps to drive traffic and call attention to the wealth of information your blog contains, not just today’s news.
Rewrite From a New Perspective: As you improve your blogging skills, learning more all the time, you may want to revisit your old posts and rewrite them with a fresh perspective.
A Revitalized Post Can Become The New Popular Post: After you’ve been blogging a while, you learn what turns a blah post into a snappy post. Editing, rewriting, or updating a post can not just add more search terms and keywords, it might turn the spotlight on the re-energized post to become a Most Popular Post.
Add a List: Instead of writing paragraph, paragraph, paragraph, try changing the content into a list form, guiding the reader through the process rather than just telling them about it. Lists and instructions are very popular compared to story-telling guides.
Spell Check: Spelling errors seem to appear like weeds. I swear I proof and check thoroughly everything I publish, but something always seems to peek out from the flowers months later. Go through and fix those spelling weeds, checking for “from” and “form” and other non-spell checking common mistakes. And while you are at it, change wrodpress to WordPress and plug-in to Plugin so people searching for your topics on these will find them.
Update Links: An external referring link isn’t permanent. Links destinations change all the time. Some webmasters are smart and add redirects, but not all are, so update your old posts by checking for outdated and dead end links and removing the truly dead ones and updating the moved links.
Revisit the Topic: Clean up the old post and then revisit the topic in a new post, referencing the old post. It’s a chance to say all the things you didn’t say the first time, adding more to the story, and a chance to add a spark of attention to the old post.
Incorporate the Old Post Into a Series: When you’ve been blogging a while, you find yourself returning frequently to a subject theme. If you find you have a related collection of blog posts, edit them to become an article series, connected together as a small body of work instead of sitting alone individually.
Create Your Own Top 10 List: Write a blog post featuring your top 10, 25, or 50 blog posts, honoring them as your favorites, most popular subject matter, or most popular for the year or month, creating a list directing readers to the old posts.
Use Related Posts: Through a Related Posts WordPress Plugin or manually, add a list of related posts to the bottom of your blog posts, pointing readers to your old posts for more information and reference.
Change The Title: If the post content is good but the title stinks, not attracting the attention you think it should, change it. You need to make another decision on whether or not to change the post slug, the URL permalink of the post, to match the new title. Few change the post slug, but do change the post title to make it really describe what the post is about and it may start attracting more traffic.
Find a Way to Create Interest and Enthusiasm on the Subject: Whether the information is a little old or not, find a way to energize the information to create renewed interest in the subject. Not just through the editing process, but blog about it and the lessons you learned, referring back to the new edited version.
It’s soooo old…: There are times when the information within an old post is soooo old, there is really no fixing it. It just has no value. Some choose to delete these for a variety of reasons. You can also keep it, but add a note that explains that this information is no longer valid, and points them in the direction of newer information, revitalizing a more recent post.

Even changing and updating a link shows a search engine you’re paying attention to your old posts. A little more care, cleaning, and maintenance may speak even more about the care you have for your entire blog, increasing your page ranking.

Don’t let the dust pile up on your old posts. Give them a good dusting and shine some light on them. They are still worthy, right? Make sure they continue to represent your blog well.

Digg it

About the author: The author of Lorelle on WordPress, as well as several other blogs, Lorelle VanFossen has been blogging in one fashion or another for over 14 years, covering travel, nature and travel photography, web design, web theory and development, blogging, and WordPress extensively as web technologies developed. Lorelle is also the author of the fast-selling book, Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging, available in the new Blog Herald Bookstore. Lorelle will be speaking at WordCamp Dallas March 29-30, the Alliance for Distance Education in California Summit April 2-5, 2008, and the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference May 2-5 in Chicago.

Comments

48 Responses to “SEO Tips: Increase Page Rank By Revitalizing Your Old Posts”

Mani on June 26th, 2007 5:54 am

Excellent thoughts listed there Lorelle..
The whole idea is about referring to your old articles once a while and not overdoing it.

You may also add that this “in a way” helps to avoid supplemental results on your blog.

Cheers!
Mani
Rhys on June 26th, 2007 6:01 am

Quick question.

Does an “old” post that still generate comments be recognised as a change in the page? Reason being is one of my old posts has continually generating comments on it, even though it’s over a year old. Surely the search engines must recognise it being as updated?
Lorelle VanFossen on June 26th, 2007 10:11 am

Mani, cleaning up your old posts has little to do with the supplemental or duplicate content “hot” SEO myth filling the blogosphere. The posts would still appear as they are in whatever “expected” multi-post view on your blog.

By the way, the normal multi-post and duplicate content aspect of a blog is expected. It’s more important to get rid of duplicate content OFF your site more than on your site, attacking splogs. Highlighting and cleaning your past posts has nothing to do with that issue.

Rhys: This is a tough question to honestly answer. Google has been known to only scan the first third to entire post plus comments to add to its database. If the comments at the end are the only thing that changes, then the search engine’s algorithm may miss it.

But you are fussing over one post. It still needs to be checked for updated links and other things you can fix, especially if it is so popular, but the algorithm takes into account all changes to your blog not just to single posts. It’s a combination of things that decides your PageRank.

I’ve found that even my most popular posts do better if I clean them up a bit every few months, especially if there is new information or updates to add to it.
David Krug on June 26th, 2007 10:11 pm

Here’s where I strongly disagree with you. Is it better to spend time developing new content and inbound links or improving and updating posts.

Ummm, the answer should be an easy one. SEO is not upding your old posts. That’s just being a good editor.

SEO is going the extra mile to make sure search engines can gobble up your content and have access to readily available fresh content and can see your inbound links.

Pagerank is also of little value and I personally dont see how cleaning up your posts brings anything to the table in improving your pagerank.

Show me the proof and I will stand corrected. Pagerank is all about the value of inbound links that come to your site.

So the better option of improving pagerank to a certain post is to write a new one updating readers about an old post. It will draw new links to your new post and possible a few new ones to your old post.

In the end this is a far far better use of your time. And has a much heavier value on your pagerank.

But we could all talk about how useless pagerank actually is another day. Because it is. Especially since the feedburner purchase.
SEO Quick Links: 27 Wednesday 2007 « Sabahan.com on June 27th, 2007 1:39 am

[…] SEO Tips: Increase Page Rank By Revitalizing Your Old Posts Lorelle VanFossen give out some tips to help you revitalise your old posts for your readers as well as to help your search engine page ranking. […]
20 Blog Promotion Guides to Inform Your Strategy - Liz Strauss at Successful Blog - Thinking, writing, business ideas . . . You’re only a stranger once. on June 27th, 2007 2:04 pm

[…] SEO Tips: Increase Page Rank By Revitalizing Your Old Posts Writing at the Blog Herald, Lorelle explains how to Increase Pank Rank and Ad Vitality and Traffic Interest in Archieved Posts […]
Armaan on June 28th, 2007 11:25 am

Nice explanation. I have a question, what is the difference between SEO & PR ?
Lorelle VanFossen on June 28th, 2007 12:13 pm

Good question. SEO is search engine optimization. In its most basic form it is preparing your blog for search engines in order to maximize your page ranking in search results. It means cleaning up code and fixing errors, combined with design, code, and writing decisions that make your content easily “searchable” by searchers by the way the data from your site is stored in the search engine’s database. For more on SEO, see Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization Guide.

People have twisted it into marketing and PR, but it really isn’t, but in a way it is. If your blog can’t be easily read by search engines, people, or searchers, then you’ve lost a marketing opportunity.

PR, public relations, is the technique of creating an identity and relationship with your customers - in the case of bloggers, their readers - with the focus on the “relation” part of the term. It’s about networking, comments, interaction, trackbacks, showing up at meetings and conferences, and participating among the peoples of the web so you are known.

It has nothing to do with SEO, but again, SEO and marketing/advertising are more closely related.

I hope that helps. Thanks for the good question.
Blog News Watch » Blog Archive » Lorelle for Blog Herald: Revisit the Post Graveyard To Up That Page Rank on June 28th, 2007 12:28 pm

[…] 2007 by Sheryl Sisk I had never considered it but she’s absolutely right: Lorelle wrote for The Blog Herald earlier this week about the impact on your Google PageRank score resulting from updating past […]
Rob O. on June 28th, 2007 8:34 pm

Good stuff, Lorelle! Moreso than for SEO purposes, I’ve found that deep-linking back to older posts is a way to bring renewed exposure to old favorites or long-since forgotten posts that never quite got the notice you had hoped they would.
David Airey :: Creative Design :: on June 29th, 2007 8:25 am

I enjoyed reading this post, Lorelle, and am looking forward to receiving your book through my letterbox (providing it fits that is).

Ciao.
SOB Business Cafe 06-29-07 - Liz Strauss at Successful Blog - Thinking, writing, business ideas . . . You’re only a stranger once. on June 29th, 2007 1:21 pm

[…] SEO Tips: Increase Page Rank By Revitalizing Your Old Posts […]
Lorelle on WordPress Is Reading My Mind | Marketing Pilgrim on June 29th, 2007 5:10 pm

[…] the Blog Herald on Wednesday, Lorelle’s column was about exactly that topic, and her answer was a resounding yes. Among […]
The Way The Internet Should Be! » Blog Archive » Lorelle on WordPress Is Reading My Mind on June 29th, 2007 5:58 pm

[…] the Blog Herald on Wednesday, Lorelle’s column was about exactly that topic, and her answer was a resounding yes. Among […]
Weekly Digest: Interviews, Guest Blogging, Kind Words, and WordCamp | Quentin Brown on June 30th, 2007 3:13 am

[…] SEO Tips: Increase Page Rank By Revitalizing Your Old Posts […]
Lorelle VanFossen on July 4th, 2007 1:30 pm

Mr. Krug:

The following are the publicly released patents on the Google PageRank:

Google’s patent for their search engine ranking technique from 2005
Google PageRank patent release from 2007

From the first patent:

What is claimed is:

1. A method for scoring a document, comprising: identifying a document; obtaining one or more types of history data associated with the document; and generating a score for the document based on the one or more types of history data.

…6. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more types of history data includes information relating to a manner in which a content of the document changes over time; and wherein the generating a score includes: determining a frequency at which the content of the document changes over time, and scoring the document based, at least in part, on the frequency at which the content of the document changes over time.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the frequency at which the content of the document changes is based on at least one of an average time between the changes, a number of changes in a time period, and a comparison of a rate of change in a current time period with a rate of change in a previous time period.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein the generating a score further includes: determining an amount by which the content of the document changes over time, and scoring the document based, at least in part, on the frequency at which and the amount by which the content of the document changes over time.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the amount by which the content of the document changes is based on at least one of a number of new pages associated with the document within a time period, a ratio of a number of new pages associated with the document versus a total number of pages associated with the document, and a percentage of the content of the document that has changed during a time period.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the determining an amount by which the content of the document changes includes: weighting different portions of the content of the document differently based on a perceived importance of the portions, and determining the amount by which the content of the document changes as a function of the differently weighted portions of the content.

11. The method of claim 6, wherein the document includes a plurality of documents; and wherein the scoring the document includes: determining a date on which the content of each of the documents last changed, determining an average date of change based on the determined dates on which the contents of the documents last changed, and scoring the documents based, at least in part, on a difference between the dates on which the contents of the documents last changed and the average date of change.

I also highly recommend reading SEOMoz - Google Historical Data Patent.
Russ on July 6th, 2007 1:46 am

I would agree with David Krug, above; given the choice between writing a new post and rewriting/polishing an old post, I’d suggest writing a new post. However, the time spent rewriting an old post is a lot less than writing a new one, so I’d also suggest doing both.
Lorelle VanFossen on July 6th, 2007 2:53 am

Actually the time spent “editing” an old post is a lot less than spent rewriting one. Old posts don’t need rewriting, they often just need to have the links checked and updated, a few spelling errors fixed, and if there is new news on the subject, add the updated information.

Since a visitor can arrive on any post on your blog, it helps to keep them in their best condition so they speak well for you and all your content. It isn’t a choice as much as part of your blog maintenance responsibilities.

This isn’t a time consuming task. As people comment on old posts, or old posts are discovered by a visitor and linked to, this gives me a chance to check it over to make sure it still says what I wanted it and that it is still in good working order.

My old posts speak loudly for my work and if they have a bad link or problem, they aren’t speaking well for me, are they?

If there is a post that I think could stand some improvements, I’ll hunt it up and give it a clean coat of paint.

Besides improving the post, it can give me an excuse to point out that I’ve updated it. And anything that invites people to look deeper into your blog, to spend more time, find more of value, - all works in your favor.

And don’t forget to link to your old posts as they encourage your readers to dig deeper and spend more time in those precious archives of yours.
dexter on July 7th, 2007 9:09 am

it woul be a best idea to look for your post that is not indexded by google and start having some internal linking to that post in this way you may increase your search engine result
Lorelle VanFossen on July 7th, 2007 2:12 pm

Excellent point. I’ve written on that before and forgot about it. Indeed. If you find a post isn’t getting the respect it deserves through visits, check to make sure it’s in Google’s index.

If it isn’t, take a serious look at it to discover why and fix it. If it is, then consider fixing it to improve its ranking with better keywords and other editing fixes.

Thanks for the reminder!
Weekly Digest: WordCamp, Interviews, 070707, Content Theft, and The Usual « Lorelle on WordPress on July 7th, 2007 6:27 pm

[…] posts on this blog, especially in light of the research I did for my article on the Blog Herald, SEO Tips: Increase Page Rank By Revitalizing Your Old Posts. Of note, the following posts have been updated with new […]
nyst.wysrt on July 9th, 2007 11:24 am

wow..I didn’t know about this until you blog about it. Thanks for the tips man! :)
Increase search engine page rangking. What you can do with your old blog posts ? | nilaworld.org on July 25th, 2007 10:03 am

[…] search engine page ranking for your blog. This morning I came across to Blogherald.com for an article by Lorelle Van Fossen about tips to update and revitalize old blog posts to increase search engine page rank. It got me […]
Ben Fu on July 28th, 2007 1:34 am

I would not agree with David Krug on the exterial links would be stable for a while. Google always keep it in mind .Ben Fu
laurent on July 30th, 2007 6:03 pm

quite interesting tips..I’ll try some of them..
Thailand on August 7th, 2007 4:50 am

just a question in my mind .updating a website too frequently is good or bad?
Dave Dragon on August 7th, 2007 8:48 am

Good article!
Lorelle VanFossen on August 7th, 2007 11:50 am

Thailand: There is no penalty for updating, no matter how often you do it. It is a sign of a good webmaster and blogger to update posts when they need it, and Google’s algorithm for blogs evaluates those updates and for the most part, judges those who update with a better score than those that sit there.

If you make a change to your web page design, move your site, or change hosts, every page on your site is going to get updated, so to speak, thus it is indicative of a “change” in the whole blog. This might bring a temporary loss in PageRank, as Google credits those who stay consistent with ownership and web host as “more stable”, but it is usually an insignificant drop if all other things are equal.

So, there is no good or bad, but it can be bad if you don’t fix what needs fixing once in a while.

I haven’t found a post on any of my blogs that didn’t need some kind of fix over the years. So fix if you want. Don’t if you don’t. But there are no rules on how much is too much.
James Bingham on August 8th, 2007 4:01 pm

That is very good blogging information! I look forward to using these tips.
Cleaning Up Old Posts, The Gateway to Your Blog : The Blog Herald on August 21st, 2007 8:13 am

[…] popular article I wrote recently, SEO Tips: Increase Page Rank By Revitalizing Your Old Posts, offered tips on why and how to put some new life into your old posts, thus increasing their […]
Newsletter to Blog: Turning Article and Reports Into Blog Posts : The Blog Herald on September 12th, 2007 12:31 am

[…] posts aren’t gone. They are still there, still important, and still relevant. This relevancy increased the value of the blog over the newsletter for the group. Instead of […]
Are You Abusing Your WordPress Pages - and Your Blog? « Lorelle on WordPress on September 18th, 2007 11:29 am

[…] to Old Posts Within Your New Posts: If you want to bring attention to your old posts, link to them from within your new posts. Use them as references. Create manual lists of references and resources to other posts […]
Sonny on October 20th, 2007 4:29 am

Very interesting idea, especially for those who have been blogging for a while and have many old posts. Thanks!
küresel on November 13th, 2007 10:06 pm

Thanks for the tips!

I also have lots of old posts which I’m afraid are getting buried beneath the newer ones.
Rotating Old Posts and Tires « Lorelle on WordPress on November 14th, 2007 5:00 am

[…] SEO Tips: Increase Page Rank By Revitalizing Your Old Posts […]
SEO, Networking, Traffic | Butterfly Media Romania Blog - Marketing, SEO and WordPress on November 15th, 2007 5:38 am

[…] are some tips to help revitalize your old posts for your readers, as well as to help your search engine page […]
Visiting the Web Past: Lillian Vernon, Catalog and Web Pioneer : The Blog Herald on November 15th, 2007 6:22 pm

[…] interesting products, shopping became less stressful. By offering your blog readers more, through related or recent blog posts, well thought out categories, and very specific tags to related content on your blog, you help your […]
johnny on November 20th, 2007 6:07 am

good answers!
Todd on November 29th, 2007 2:54 pm

This is great advice and something I’ve tried to incorporate lately with some success. Thanks for reinforcing my idea about this topic.
Improving Your Blog: Consistency : The Blog Herald on December 6th, 2007 8:59 pm

[…] your links updated as much as possible, even on old posts, but especially on old popular posts. Visitors often don’t pay attention to when a post was published as much as they care about […]
Nithish on December 18th, 2007 12:03 pm

Make sure that all your important pages are linked to from the frontpage and other major pages, but distinguish between important and less important pages.This is important in increasing the page rank.
CPBJ on January 15th, 2008 7:55 am

I have used some of these tips and they worked pretty well for me. I am glad I stumbled onto this blog of yours.
Can You Sell Your Blog? « Lorelle on WordPress on January 30th, 2008 5:40 am

[…] Unique Content: The blog title and URL are incredibly value, bu so is the blog content. Is the content unique and original or mostly link lists and blockquotes? How “timely” is the content? Does it go out of date quickly or is it long lasting? How much value does the content have? How many posts? How often are they published? Regularly? What type of posts are published? Is the subject focused or spread out? What does it cover the most? Which posts are the most popular? Which get the most traffic directly from search engines? […]
Daphne on February 14th, 2008 3:44 am

Great source of information. Thanks a lot for the nice tips. I’ll apply that on my blogs… I have lots of old posts that I can make use of this list. Thanks!
Wayne Mansfield on February 25th, 2008 2:49 am

Guys

I am trying to restore a PR4 which disappeared in the great google PR slap so this article gives me heart that all is not lost.

Nearly 2 years of work has gone down the drain because we had some links to …. ( don’t ant to cause a hassle here too! ) and google stomped on all of the people in that situation.
Justin Kauffman on March 13th, 2008 12:57 pm

Good advice never thought of this before. I’ll pass this onto my clients.
P.B.Eswar on March 15th, 2008 12:06 pm

Superb, if you think that was for the article you are wrong, it’s for the way the questions been answered this is where Lorelle you are very strong i always enjoy the comments section of your posts,where you are really strong.Its a great entry and thanks for the good information.
Aurelius Tjin on May 2nd, 2008 2:12 am

Nice post! The ideas and insights are very worth reading. You really gave me valuable information. Thanks for sharing it!

Leave a Reply

News

End of Minnebar coverage for 2008
May 10, 2008 | By Matt Craven | Leave a Comment

That marks the end of the Minnebar coveage for 2008 - I’m off to the Metrodome to watch my beloved Boston Red Sox beat up on the Minnesota Twins.
Digg it

3 Reasons to Use Disqus
May 10, 2008 | By Matt Craven | Leave a Comment

The Disqus blog commenting service is catching on - with many popular blogs such as Scripting News signing on to use the service.
VC Fred Wilson talks about three reasons to use Disqus in a recent post:
2a) Email Replies - Disqus emails every comment to the blogger. If the blogger wants to reply to the comment, […]

Statbot takes a look at the all time TechMeme Leaderboard
May 10, 2008 | By Matt Craven | Leave a Comment

Statbot has taken a look at the all-time leaderboard for TechMeme.
Of course, no one should be surprised to find that TechCrunch is at the top of the list…. interesting data, however, nonetheless…
Digg it

Google Closes Hello (What’s That Anyway?)
May 9, 2008 | By Thord Daniel Hedengren | 2 Comments

I’m reading that Google is closing Hello, which apparently was (and is, as I’m writing this), a photo sharing service that came with Picasa. I guess they feel it doesn’t fill a purpose anymore.
This from Hello.com:
We originally embarked on a mission to make photo sharing easier and more fun with Hello. We plan to keep […]

Colleen Coplick Talks PR over at BloggerTalks
May 9, 2008 | By Thord Daniel Hedengren | 1 Comment

I recently interviewed Colleen Coplick about taking over Buzz Networker, and there I said that an interview with her focusing on PR was due on BloggerTalks. Well, it is up now, and Colleen shares her views on paid reviews, PR agencies sending out samples, getting famous in the social sphere, how to write a great […]

MyBlogLog Adds More Stuff
May 9, 2008 | By Thord Daniel Hedengren | Leave a Comment

MyBlogLog have added some new stuff, since the obviously get that we’re not monogamous when it comes to online apps and social networks.
Specifically, whenever you:

post a question to Yahoo Answers
share an item on Google Reader
post a video on Seesmic

MyBlogLog will post those events and make them part of your New with Me page.
All you […]

Patrons

Recent listings from Blogger Jobs

Five Blogging Jobs
This quintet is courtesy of our sister site, Performancing.com: Tech Blogger — “You’ll have an eye for a interesting story and op [...]

Gawker Media Seeks Designer
Gawker Media is looking for “a highly creative, conceptual designer with experience and interest in advertising, branding, and web design to w [...]

Social Media Marketing Blogger Wanted
We got this email from Eric Thom: We are looking to hire a blogger that is fully immersed and experienced about the subject of Social Media Marketin [...]

Wanted: Media Blogger to Discuss Corporate Websites
We got this email from Corporate Eye: There are some very exciting things happening behind the scenes here at Corporate Eye. We’re soon going to [...]

Weekly Bloggers for Hire 36
Want your profile here? Read this earlier post for more info. Remember: please follow the instructions there. One-liners will be ignored and have be [...]

More at Blogger Jobs