Optimize Blog Posts for SEO

How to Optimize Your New and Old Blog Posts for SEO

More than half of marketers will tell you that content is still king when it comes to attracting visitors. Their ultimate goal, of course, is to increase incoming leads and make more conversions.

However, generating interesting and relevant content is only part of the process. Having that content optimized for SEO is crucial, for appearing in SERPs.

According to Statista, Google is by far the market leader when it comes to search engines. Google holds somewhere around 85% of the market share in 2022.

It is clear then, that Google’s metrics surrounding SEO cannot be ignored. This applies to older content as well.

Should you concentrate solely on generating new content for your blog posts?

Producing quality, up-to-the-minute content can keep an audience engaged. When content provides interesting and relevant material, along with images and videos, it can help to generate sales.

However, producing new content takes time and a lot of energy. Thinking up new ideas all the time can be hard. Guest writers can be highly useful in this situation.

When producing content that is SEO optimized you need to consider the use of keywords and phrases carefully. H1 tags should be used for titles and H2 for the subheadings. Image alt tags are also critical.

Yet, old posts shouldn’t be ignored either. It could be as important, and maybe more so, to revisit old blogs and revitalize them.

Why do you need to update and optimize your old blog posts?

One study done by Ahrefs showed that the highest-ranking pages on SERPs were around two and three years old. This shows that it isn’t just new content that Google searches for or attracts visitors.

Going back to old content can increase your standings on SERPs without having to produce new ideas. It can push a webpage that is appearing on page 2 of search results to the front page. And, it can also spike interest in a post that had been losing traffic.

How to do this?

Firstly, look at the content itself. Remove out-of-date information, and update facts and figures. You may want to consider rewriting the introduction completely, or at least in part to inform the reader that the article has been updated.

Look at your keywords next. Google Keyword Planner can help you out in this area.

Check for dead links, add new ones to relevant authorities. Update the images, and add video if relevant. Then look at the on-page SEO. Experts such as justrank.my will recommend four key areas for improving SEO on blog posts.

These areas are as follows:

• On-page SEO
• Off-page SEO
• Technical SEO
• Keyword research

Once Google is aware that your content has been updated, you should start to see a rise in the number of visitors to those posts. If you aren’t up to scratch with your SEO skills though, it may be an idea to use an agency or some outside help.

Is it important to use outside SEO experts for this work?

With the advent of WIX and WordPress, many people wonder why pay an agency to build and maintain a website?

After all, you could use a WYSIWYG tool and build a website simply. The problem is that sites built this way are often poor when it comes to SEO. The individuals behind the builds take little time to understand the various areas of SEO, and how they will help to generate traffic.

It is said by many that basic SEO can be learned in a few weeks, and of course, practicing will bring about improvements and a better understanding.

To properly understand the intricacies of SEO can take years though. And with Google constantly changing and adding metrics, it is an ongoing learning process.

What do you gain by optimizing your posts for SEO?

Having a blog post that has been optimized will help with your overall SEO strategy. New content, and updated content, will help to retain and attract a new audience.

In short, optimizing old and new blog posts will help you to:

• Rank higher in SERPs
• Gain organic traffic
• Retain your existing audience
• Generate more leads
• Increase conversions

With the relevant keywords carefully used, and the right content, you will show up higher in SERPs. Along with good content can come backlinks.

Backlinks are vital for generating organic traffic from search engines. Good SEO can improve lead generation, and backlinks are crucial here.

However, be clear that these links need to be high quality. To ensure that your backlinks are of good quality they should link to websites that publish relevant content to yourself and are regarded as authoritative sites.

Summary

Using an agency can be one way of revitalizing old content, and gaining insight into optimizing new content too.

Yet, some simple tweaks to your content can help to improve the SEO. Performing keyword research, updating information, and making sure there are no dead links, are some simple but basic improvements.

If you take the time to improve your blogs, your overall SEO strategy will benefit you, and you should see a spike in traffic.

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