If you’ve been blogging since it was called weblogging, you’ll be chuffed with the burgeoning blogging renaissance (thank you, Substack). If that perfectly describes you, now might be the time for joint supplements but also, it’s time to update old blog posts.

Conscientious types already audit their content but often life gets in the way which means you’ll be sayin’…

Perhaps you haven’t reviewed or had a mind to update old blog posts since the dawn of your website, and if that’s the case, get ready to clean house with this easy-peasy guide.

Here’s what we’re covering in this TL;DR article:

Yes, there’s a lot to get through.

Why bother to update old blog posts?

Old content gets found on the interwebs. Articles from days of yore still attract web traffic, so why wouldn’t you update old blog posts? A blog’s priority is to provide evergreen content, the kind of content that lasts a long-ass time. But that doesn’t mean it’s maintenance-free, nope, all content requires regular review.

Record what you have.

I’m not gonna lie, this part could take ages. Your website provider will have an ‘export content’ function (WordPress certainly does). However, that’s mostly for transferring content to a new website. If you give that a go, you might have to convert the output file——and then spend time formatting it. I’m old-fashioned (coz I’m old), so I prefer to look through my list of published blogs and write them down. I speed things up by hitting Ctrl-C on the entire list and pasting it onto a spreadsheet (see, I’m not a complete Luddite). After a little formatting, I’m good to go.

Here are the items I include on my blog auditing spreadsheet:

1. Date of the audit
2. Blog post title
3. Focus keyword
4. Original publish date

Find a focus keyword.

This may seem like putting the cart before the horse, but you’d be surprised how many blog articles don’t use keywords. Years ago, SEO wasn’t a thing for your average business, but it’s never too late to add a focus keyword (a main page keyword) when you update old blog posts.

👉 >>4 different keyword types for SEO<<

Before you panic about the amount of keyword research awaiting you, go ahead and batch your freshly made content audit spreadsheet into two groups:

1. The content you optimise for search
2. Everything else

Potential clients who know you exist are unlikely to google you (they already know how to reach you), so broad content, the kind for organic traffic, isn’t what they want. Therefore, the unique-to-your-business blurb isn’t very SEO-friendly, so you can hold off on keyword research for those articles.

👉 >>Blogging is dead: the lie that won’t die<<

Ok, let’s see how search-worthy your old content really is. Conduct a Google search using old blog titles. (It’s helpful to know what content currently performs well.)

This prelim Google search does three things:

1. It reveals search intent (intent to buy/learn)
2. It reveals how well the content matches your query
3. It offers alternative suggestions (helping with content ideation)

If your old blog title struggles to reveal relevant search results, it might mean very few folks are looking for that exact query.

But how do you know?

The answer is you don’t until you delve deeper.

Unless you’re after low-volume search results, blog titles are too long to input into keyword tools. Make an educated guess about the word/short phrase (from each blog title) that best represents the content. Once decided, pop it into a keyword tool (Ahrefs, Semrush, Wordstream, et al) and see what happens.

Let me explain what often happens…

Research findings for THIS blog post weren’t great. The keyword phrase ‘update old blog posts’ had low search volume (about ten per month). Similar——AKA Approximate keywords had greater search volume. However, they didn’t match what I wanted to write about.

Oosh.

The thing is, I know that freelancers, bloggers and business owners will find an article like this helpful, so I wrote it anyway. (Interestingly enough, as of June 2025, this is my top-performing blog post.) Low volume doesn’t mean no volume. The search results are an ever-changing landscape, and targeting low-volume keywords (AKA volume intent) can be part of your SEO content strategy.

You might be able to edit articles in favour of higher volume keywords. Maybe you’ll get lucky and one will fit exactly with the content. And as long as the keyword isn’t too competitive, you’re quids in.

Once you have your keywords, add them to, wait for it, key areas and dot them sparingly throughout the content. Don’t forget to tell your website what each keyword is (and add it to your content auditing spreadsheet). SEO plugins (Yoast, RankMath and AIOSEO) make assigning a focus keyword easy.

Edit individual blog articles.

So now you’re thinking ‘evergreen content’, yeah? Great. With that in mind, ask yourself, is this article providing relevant subject-based information? And is all that information correct? If the answer to both questions is a resounding ‘hell, no’, you can trash the post or relegate it to drafts.

Blog articles you keep should reflect your brand voice, your practices and your offering. When you update old blog posts, be sure to check spelling and grammar, but also assess the flow of the writing. Is it readable? Does it make sense, and can folks easily grasp the message? In short, does the content do what you want it to do? What’s the article’s motivation, dammit? Is it priming a sale? Is it a ‘deep dive’ into your process? Is it providing information to the uneducated? Understand the purpose, and you can lead the user to an appropriate call to action (CTA).

👉 >>Learn how to write engaging content<<

You can mix things up a bit with your CTAs depending on what you’re asking the audience to do next. When you update old blog posts, think about how likely each CTA will be acted upon. When your content resonates, CTAs get clicked, but not all CTAs are created equal.

A soft CTA is one with low-level commitment, the ‘sign up for the newsletter’ kind. A hard CTA requires a greater investment (the client’s time and/or cash). These folks need much more to go on. Deal with any hesitation before pointing to a hard CTA.

Optimise post titles.

This is your main page title, your H1 heading. You have one of these beauties per page:

I know you won’t believe this, but I’m about to suggest using an AI heading tool.

What?!!

Here’s a confession: I’m terrible at writing headings, so I often use a headline analyser to nudge my noggin into idea-generating mode. I don’t lean on it too heavily because, like any AI writing tool, it makes you sound like every bastard else (which is what Grammarly is trying to do as I type). Since almost every business has gone ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude crazy, the race to homogeneity is greater than before.

Some things never change.

(If you need a break from reading this, please go and watch/listen to Talking Heads – Once in a Lifetime.)

This happens because AI can’t understand your audience; it can only offer suggestions in a universal language. That’s bad news for marketing, but give it a go; you might find a headline tool helpful.

👉 >>Should content writers launch a Luddite rebellion against ChatGPT?<<

A word to the wise: avoid clickbaity bollocks. Titles like that are misleading and harm trust-building. So, how do you make headings attractive/interesting/engaging——clickable? Spark the synapses of your audience with your titles by pinching the pain point and speaking directly to them.

Format blog article layout.

When we update old blog posts, it’s best to arrange the content in a particular way.

We do that for two reasons:

1. To be readable
2. To be crawlable (the thing search engines do)

Keep the user and SEO in mind when you format content. In truth, aside from the techie aspects of SEO, almost everything else (SEO-wise) wants the same thing as your website visitors: top-notch user experience (UX).

And that looks like this:

• Contrasting colours
• Easy-to-read fonts
• Image descriptions and alt. field text
• Video subtitles (the ones you can actually follow)
• Video transcripts for learning and long videos
• Auto-play off (for the love of God)
• A table of contents
• Correct heading hierarchy (H1, H2, H3, H4)
• Manageable paragraphs
• Clear CTAs

And also, this…

Include an author box.

To stop people thinking “who wrote this shit and on what authority?” add an author box at the end of your articles. The visitor might not be convinced, but at least they’ll know your name and credentials (so they can stalk you and send abusive emails). Google also likes to know who’s publishing stuff, and it’s all down to that rascal, E-E-A-T.

👉 >>E-E-A-T: the SEO principle to feed your website users<<

Check links.

Here’s hoping you’ve been linking to other areas of your website——not haphazardly but strategically. If you have, make sure those links still work. When you mention another article (yours or someone else’s), check that it still exists (and is relevant). When you point to an outside source, there’s a chance the content has been deleted. In that case, kill the link or find an alternative.

Use page breadcrumbs.

Some websites are deeper than the Mariana Trench. You can get lost exploring such depths. Just like Hansel and Gretel, leave breadcrumbs to guide you home. Website breadcrumbs are a secondary navigation, often below the primary navigation:

Breadcrumbs help users navigate your content, but they also help Google. You’re saying, hey, this is the content route/path/road, how wonderful! Google AND the users reply, thank you, this makes perfect sense!

Some SEO plugins offer a breadcrumb menu (AIOSEO does). Check your website provider; they might use them as standard.

Pick a category and add tags.

Just like breadcrumbs, categories and tags enhance the user experience. In a website-building context, the word ‘enhance’ is synonymous with ease of use. The blog category is the broad topic many articles fall under:

(The category forms part of the breadcrumb navigation.)

Tags are specific subcategories, and you can use as many as you like:

Categories and tags are clickable, so visitors can view other content that applies to each category and tag. That results in folks staying on your website longer, and we all want that.

Choose a featured image.

When you update old blog posts, add a featured image. They generate the thumbnail image you see when a link is shared. A featured image is also another place to add the focus keyword. You type it into the ‘alt. title’ field, and before I get lynched, yes, the alt. title text exists to make images accessible to page reader tools. But guess what? You can do both: add the keyword AND explain what the image is.

Update the date.

The date of blog articles can have a profound effect on search. Folks have reported spikes in traffic after published dates were changed. That’s likely because Google regards newer content as the most accurate. But wait a minute, don’t JUST update the date, revise the content too (you bloody scamp).

In my WordPress site, no matter how many times I update old blog posts, the original publish date remains the same, so when I review and edit blog content, I manually change the publish date. Sadly, my blog posts don’t display the date on the page (which I think is dumb), so I add a date block to the page:

I use a block instead of typing the date, lest it buggers up SEOing.

How so?

A typed date will effectively become your first paragraph, and that’s a paragraph with no content (or keyword), so please, don’t do that. I also add (at the end of each article) the first date an article was published. This says to the user that my content is regularly updated.

Add a redirect.

When you update old blog posts, you might fool around with the page URL (page link/page address). The old link won’t work. When users click it, they’ll get this (not exactly this):

A redirect plugin will guide the user to the new URL automatically. (I use Redirection on my WordPress site.)

Optimise permalink structure.

Each blog post has a permanent address (a permalink). That structure should be geared for crawler bots (Google indexing). Your website dashboard is where you find your permalinks:

I don’t want the bots taking any longer than they have to, scanning the permalink. The blog title takes priority, so I avoid clogging up the URL with the post date and/or post category.

My permalinks are configured like this:

mydomain.com / blogposttitle

In the real world, that looks like this:

Add schema markup.

Sorry, what?

Schema (AKA structured data) is Google’s love language. It’s actually the language search engines use to understand content on web pages. For example, this page you’re reading is an article (if you are still reading). We want to tell Google we have different content for different things. Things like product pages and service pages, and there are loads of schemas to choose from.

Alas, I’m not a programmer. I didn’t build my website from the digital ether, and I’m assuming you didn’t either. If that’s so, even if you had access to your website’s back end, you probably wouldn’t know what to do with it (oo-err). Sadly, the back end is where you add schema markup. So what’s a non-coder to do? First, have a breakdown and second, find another plugin.

Most SEO plugins offer basic structured data options. Once you figure out the plugin setup, you can assign the appropriate structured data to each page.

Add/update page snippets.

Page snippets (AKA meta titles and descriptions) are the page previews you see on search engine results pages (SERPs):

When you update old blog posts, write a custom snippet. SEO plugins provide a section for them.

Tell Google about content updates.

Submit new/updated content to Google via Google Search Console (GSC).

Here’s how you do that:

1. Copy the page URL
2. Head over to GSC
3. Go to ‘Inspect any URL’ (at the top of the page)
4. Dump the copied URL into the ‘Inspect any URL’ field
5. Click ‘Request Indexing’

Phew, that was long, huh?

Update old blog posts – a summary:

• Assess content for repurposing
• Add a focus keyword
• Match the keyword with the content
• Make the content easy to digest
• Make the content sound like your business
• Make on-page SEO adjustments
• Submit changes to Google

*BONUS POINT*

If you’ve worked your arse off, slaving over a hot computer, updating old blog posts, you better make sure you spread the word. Share an article each day as part of your social media marketing. Send them in your email campaigns——whatever you do, tell your peeps that you have helpful stuff for them to apply to their business.

Article first published, 3rd October 2024

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