SEO Tips: Increase Page Rank By Revitalizing Your Old Posts

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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.

Author: Lorelle VanFossen

The author of Lorelle on WordPress and the fast-selling book, Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging, as well as several other blogs, Lorelle VanFossen has been blogging for over 15 years, covering blogging, WordPress, travel, nature and travel photography, web design, web theory and development extensively as web technologies developed.

Comments

  1. Mani says

    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

  2. Rhys says

    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?

  3. Lorelle VanFossen says

    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.

  4. David Krug says

    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.

  6. Lorelle VanFossen says

    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.

  7. Rob O. says

    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.

  9. Lorelle VanFossen says

    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.

  10. Russ says

    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.

  11. Lorelle VanFossen says

    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.

  12. dexter says

    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

  13. Lorelle VanFossen says

    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!

  19. Lorelle VanFossen says

    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.

  20. küresel says

    Thanks for the tips!

    I also have lots of old posts which I’m afraid are getting buried beneath the newer ones.

  21. Todd says

    This is great advice and something I’ve tried to incorporate lately with some success. Thanks for reinforcing my idea about this topic.

  22. Nithish says

    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.

  24. Daphne says

    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!

  25. Wayne Mansfield says

    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.

  27. P.B.Eswar says

    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.

  30. Wine Shop says

    There are even plugins available to help you revitalise an old post:

    Related posts – aids with linking to forgotten about posts (though can be hit or miss!)

    I also made one ages ago that updates the oldest post every X hours to bring it to the top of the pile. I stopped using it because I don’t have any need for it any more, but it was great for none date specific posts, like the history blog I used to run.

  35. Lorelle VanFossen says

    @ Miie:

    It’s only as painful as you make it. I generally keep the most popular old posts updated, or ones that suddenly get a burst of traffic or new comment. Or when someone reminds me that a link or two is out of date or something isn’t up-to-date. It’s up to you about how much work you put into this, or not. But if you have a post that is consistently bringing in traffic, you better be paying attention to it and make sure it is serving your blog well.

  36. andreatedeschi.com says

    Very useful post. So i think the best way to increase page ranking is to write your own, new and interesting articles. All time I use a search engine is to find NEW informations so the more recent is your post content, the more chance you have to increase the number of its hits.
    My 2 cents.

  37. luzonsavana says

    can u all help me bcoz i’m comfuse between blogger.com and wordpress.. the way to increase traffic is same or different between blogger and wordpress??

  38. Jerson says

    @Lorelle VanFossen, dexter
    Great Tip. I tried it with one of my old post which got lost in Google index. I edited the post and it did create some improvement.

    Thanks

  42. Jovir says

    Thanks for the helpful tips. I did not even know from the start that constantly updating old posts could revitalize the page rank of your blog.

    Cheers and more power!

  43. Rogue says

    THis is the kind of information I have been looking for. Wonderful then. I have lots of good PR’d posts but those were written when I was starting out blogging and they were full of errors… I was so afraid to touch them afraid that the PR might go away and seeing this makes me glad. The same is true with my images that I wanted too bad to fix.. Thank you for writing about this.

  44. David Occhino says

    Thank you for posting this information. I’ve updated a few of my older pages now after reading your article and the stats for those pages are up about 20% from what they were.

  45. Shall says

    Great practical skills.thanks for sharing.Now I know it is important to make sure the old content continues to have life and vitality

  46. Steve Harold says

    Hi
    Vey useful tips about revitalising old posts. It’s nice to know that we can still get a lot of mileage from old old articles and kinda keep them fresh

  47. Grapho says

    Thank you for this post which answers a number of questions that I had about updating a post. I still have one question, however – does updating also include submitting an old post to social bookmarking sites?

    I experimented with one or two old posts by submitting them to just a few social bookmarks and it seems to have given them new life.

  48. seo says

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

    seo

  49. jasser says

    i have noticed that if i improve my content on my pages from time to time i will have greater page rank for my pages and more content will help to increase your rank

  50. Keith says

    Looking back at some of my first articles, they need some editing, link restructuring, and alt text, I wouldn’t spend the time to re-write any of them, maybe add a few keywords and links (internal).

    I believe time is better spent writing new content.

    Regards,
    Keith

  58. Quinton Hoover says

    It is really very important to update the blog every now and then because google should think that you are regularly adding new content. Other wise it will assume that you are just posted some article to get some backlinks. A content which was given some time every now and then is considered as the fresh content..

  61. Dhagelan says

    Interesting thoughts about google not thinking that you are regularly adding new content. Surely, most blogs are kept up-to-date with regular posts!! Am I right or not?

  62. Zuco says

    Thank you for this tips!
    I wonder if just linking posts from the main page is enough or linking them from post to post makes really a difference.

  63. ti says

    Excellecnt tips for getting PR, will try your suggestions and already bookmarked your post and suggest others to visit.

  65. Djroshan says

    You are right , i used to correct and update my old post and suddenly i found that my page rank for the old post increasing.Or i can say google is crawling my new and old posts and displaying in top 10.
    I keep updating my site as required .however great article to increase page rank.

  68. Jason says

    Excellent Sharing yes with the some efforts you can fuel a new life to old really its better to modify older one a bit rather than post a similar one.

  69. John Deacon says

    Repurposing posts are always a good idea. Very easy to do and gives you a chance on internal linking – thanks for the refresher and pointers. Leslie Rhode has a great lecture on repurposing content also – not sure where to find that now.

  74. kevin says

    Search optimization is a hyper-competitive endeavor that requires intense focus and a thorough, up-to-date understanding of how the search engine algorithms and robots operate.
    ==============================================
    kevin

    SEO

  79. Dale Sackrider, II says

    Thank you for another great post! I googled “should I fix spelling errors on my old posts” to find your blog entry and I’m glad to know that Lorelle herself has spelling error weeds!

    I really thought I was losing it, but I SWEAR I checked before I hit publish…

  80. Abs says

    This is a very good article. I started to blog just 6 months ago. Now, I already have more than a hundred articles. The old articles I have are perfect opportunities to test the above tips that you mentioned. I hope it will be effective and make my website more discoverable by search engines.

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  84. Amit Sinha says

    Wow i really appreaciate the minute details presented here….some were obvious but i think when u read it then u want to follow it…I have implemented internal backlink thing and things have started improving on my site…..

  89. David Michael says

    I realize now that many of my articles need some editing and link restructuring.When I started out I didnt realize just how much was involved. The keyword, links, etc I think it will be easiest to re-write some of them and add more internal links. It seems that you get better page rankings with your page links going back to a strong home page on your site.

  91. Pat Williams says

    Hmm… I don’t know about this one. I worked for an seo firm and I always thought the focus was updating with new content not rehashing the old.

  94. dofollow forum says

    It is more important to get backlinks from dofollow websites. dofollow forums are great way to create quality backlinks and help you to increase your PR very fast.

  96. Helena says

    Well, I am a blogger for a few years now and still reuse and check and update my old posts, with the new ideas and ideas that I found in articles like this one.

    This is really necessary in my case, because many of my post feat in a nice easily identifiable categories, that I aggregate into subjects.

    Since I have a specific theme blog, I try not to go far about my blog main topic.

    Anyway I really find very difficult to increase my blog page rank.

    Ok, I don’t spend my days commenting in other people blogs and maybe that is why (not a lot of incoming links).

    Also I don’t post every day, and choose to write a new post every week.

    Anyway, thanks for the tips, that I will keep applying to my blog ;)

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  99. Vic says

    Thanks for this great SEO tips Lorelle. My blog has already more than a hundred articles, though it is just a few month old (3 months). But despite of this numbers I still receive few visitors and this could only mean that the majority of my posts do not receive visitors at all. My question is that how many month or period it will take to deem a post an old post? Maybe I receive few visitors because my blog is just new.

  101. hiu says

    Also, 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.

  102. Mary says

    I like your tips. I don’t have a blog but instead a static website. Still, your advice is very helpful. Sometimes we add content to an existing page and then publish the page to our RSS feed so that readers can see the updates. What you suggestion terms of refreshing and improving the content is very much appreciated.

  104. ResultFirst says

    Modifying old content and posts is an easy way to improve page ranking. I also like the idea of using an old post in a new series to create something new and different altogether. The idea of using a new link to an old post is also great. Planning to implement them soon enough.