When you first started blogging, chances are you didn’t really know what you were doing. You’d been told you were supposed to blog, and you probably knew it was important for something called SEO, but you only had a shaky idea of what that meant. And your earliest blog posts…aren’t exactly brilliant.
We’ve all been there.
So, is it worth it to go back and rewrite those posts, optimizing them for SEO along the way?
I’ve had a few clients ask if I’ll go back through their blog archives and optimize past blog posts they wrote themselves. The answer is, yes, that is a service I offer. But my goal is to support you as a business owner. I want you and your business to get good value from my services. And sometimes, optimizing old posts isn’t the best use of your resources.
If you’re considering having someone go back and optimize your past blog posts (or doing it yourself), here’s when I recommend updating past posts…and when you’re better off using your budget for something else.
Wait…If My Old Blog Posts Aren’t Optimized, Are They Just a Waste?
Before we dive into it, let’s deal with this idea of wasted effort. Because, let’s be honest, that’s probably at the heart of why you’re considering having someone optimize your past blogs in the first place. You already put a lot of work into writing those blogs, and you don’t want that to go to waste. There’s a sense that, rather than creating new content, it will be way more effective to have a professional polish up your old blog posts so they shine.
In some ways, that’s true. (Check out last month’s post about recycling blog content.) But not all blog posts are going to serve you well, even when they’re optimized for search engines. With some posts, it’s better to just leave them as is, rather than spending money or time optimizing them when that probably isn’t going to make much difference to your SEO.
But even if you decide an older blog post isn’t a good candidate for optimizing, don’t look at it as a failure. You learned something through those early days of blogging, even if it was just, “I hate blogging and I want to outsource this.” Chances are, you also picked up a little bit about SEO, creating titles, incorporating keywords, and coming up with content. All of that will stand you in good stead as you keep building your business, whether you hire a ghost blogger or keep DIY-ing it. Trying something out isn’t a waste—it’s about learning!
Now that we’ve established that, let’s analyze whether or not it’s worth it to optimize those old posts for SEO.
Yes, It’s Worth it to Optimize That Past Post for SEO
It’s worth it to revamp a past blog post if it covers information that’s still relevant to your readers. Evergreen content (informational posts that provide value to your readers year-round) are great candidates for updating and recycling. If you wrote a “What to Wear” post, that one’s probably worth updating and reposting, because it’s a question your clients will still want answers to. As you (and/or I) rewrite, we’ll use our SEO knowledge to optimize that post so the new version is better than the old one.
No, Don’t Bother with That Old Blog Post
Most of the time, it’s not worth it to optimize old session posts. These simply have a shorter shelf-life than informational posts. People want to see your recent work, not what you did five years ago. If you’re thinking about going back and rewriting all those posts from three years ago about the Smith family’s outdoor photoshoot and Baby B’s cake smash, it’s probably better to save yourself the trouble and just focus on getting your current sessions up on the blog.
Maybe…
Of course, there are always exceptions. While it’s a good general rule that informational posts are worth updating and session posts aren’t, there may be some situations where it makes sense to go back and optimize a session post. Such as,
If you’ve stepped away from your business for a while and don’t have any current work to show. In this case, you may want to use some of the old posts in your archives to showcase what you can do, highlight favorite sessions, and talk about how excited you are to get back in the saddle (I mean, behind the lens) again, until you have some more recent work under your belt.
Of, if you have a session that was super popular. Maybe, when you ask folks to go through your portfolio and send you some favorites for inspiration, they always send you images from that one newborn session of Baby Rose. This session may be worth optimizing for SEO and reposting on your site, because it’s clearly still relevant for clients.
Or, if you’re a little sparse on a particular type of session. Maybe the past three months you’ve been inundated with newborn girls…and not a single boy. It may be time to grab one of last year’s baby boy sessions, optimize it, and post it to the blog, just to remind people that, yes, you do boys too!
In Conclusion
If you’ve hired RedFox Blogging to take care of your blog, I’m happy to help you decide if a post you wrote in the past might be worth a rewrite, complete with SEO. If you’re making the decision on your own, then the best advice I can give you is to think about your clients, not the search engines. If you optimize that post, will it help your clients get their questions answered, decide if your services are right for them, or provide useful information?
If the answer is yes, then go ahead and rewrite that post, or ask a pro to do it for you. If, on the other hand, you’re only wanting to optimize that post because you’re hoping it might do something for your SEO, you might want to rethink your strategy. It’s not going to hurt anything to go back and optimize all your old posts for SEO. But it’s probably a better use of your resources to be selective, and only rewrite the posts that will be most helpful for both your business and your clients.
