How to Repurpose Old Content

Blog content is a fresh, creative way of keeping your readers up to date with company news and industry hints and tips. But like with everything, blog posts can become stale and outdated over time and they would therefore require refreshing and repurposing in order to meet the expectation of today’s modern audience.

It will also help in terms of SEO as revitalised content will seem shiny and new to Google algorithms. You might find that older articles have started gaining views again, all because you’ve tweaked it slightly. So what does it mean, exactly, to repurpose old content and how can you do it effectively?

What does it mean to repurpose old content?

Every time you write a blog post, you’re aiming it towards certain audiences and with specific intent in mind. Fast-forward a few years and both of the aforementioned have somewhat changed and this then means that it’s time to rewrite old blog posts.

In order to do that, you must revise your content in order to add as much value as possible in the present day. Doing this not only benefits the site owner/business owner, but it also benefits the content writer/copywriter as they won’t have to spend time putting a blog post together from scratch.

How can you repurpose old content?

Once you’ve determined that you have old content that needs to be repurposed, it’s time to look more closely at them. Some of the things you need to think about when it comes to revitalising blog posts includes knowing what the new purpose is together with the type of content that you should be rewriting, such as evergreen content, for example. How can you repurpose your old content effectively?

Audit your existing content

Take a look through all of the blog pages on the website you’re dealing with. Pinpoint some that were published three or more years ago and use those as starting point. It’s recommended that you make up a spreadsheet with all of the old articles you think would be worth repurposing.

You should include the title of the article, the topic, the date it was published and what the word count is. Word count is an important part of SEO as it helps to build trust in the SERPs (search engine results page). If some articles have a low word count, then it could do with expanding.

What is the purpose?

Once you have all of the blog posts listed that need to be repurposed, you then need to figure out exactly what you want to gain from the update. What are the benefits of revitalising a particular blog post? You need to determine whether or not repurposing it is worth your time. You need to start with clear goals in mind and now is the time to jot them down. 

You then need to decide whether you’re going to tweak the content or completely repurpose it. Tweaking the content will involve fixing typos, updating snippets of information, adding keywords where there weren’t any before or even taking out keywords that are no longer relevant. Repurposing the copy is a far more extensive process.

So much so, it could mean changing the intent of the content altogether. You need to read through the original article and work out whether it needs a quick revamp or a complete overhaul.

Try to repurpose evergreen, high-performing content

Evergreen content is, essentially, content that has relevancy throughout time, no matter how much of it passes. As such, you’ll find that they’re far easier to repurpose than articles that have timelines attached to them or that are far too niche to be republished today. High-performing content should also be targeted. When determining this, you should look for blog posts that rank well for the following:

• Reach
• Organic visibility
• Linking structure
• Shares
• Other performance statistics

Kumo has a team of SEO, PPC and content specialists, each with a wealth of industry knowledge and expertise to draw upon. Whether you’d like us to implement a blog or news page, write the content for you, develop a website or improve leads and conversions, you’ll be able to count on us to help. For more information, get in touch with a member of our expert team today – we’re always happy to hear from you.