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A common question people ask about blog content is whether they should republish their blog content.
Well, every blog post is an investment, you have put time into creating your blog, building up an audience and time into acquiring the knowledge of the content of your posts. You have invested all this and that’s before you have even written anything. Are you really going to write that post only for it to be the tiny blip online never to be seen again unless someone maybe shares it?
So you may well by now know how I am going to answer this question. Yes, do maximize your return on investment and republish that content.
In fact, your older and popular blog posts are true workhorses. if you already have an established blog then there is a good chance a lot of your monthly traffic is generated by this content.
Republishing this powerful established content can help you give a boost to the rest of your blog content by leveraging its influence.
How exactly do you go about republishing
Repost on social media
The most obvious way is to republish on social media. if your going to repost your links to your content to new followers or those who may have missed it the first time then be sure to make the post unique. Twitter for one is getting stricter about reposting identical tweets.
Look for opportunities to post established content, like if something is becoming viral you can jump onto this with a link to content if relevant.
Maintain your internal backlinks
How many topics do you normally write about, a typical blog is just a handful, two of three and this is very useful for this step.
Go through your old posts and look for places where you can link to other posts on pages on your website that are relevant to this and add in a link.
Create a list of links at the bottom of your posts to content that you have created that is relevant, even if briefly,
Which of your old links are your top performers, find out which are your workhorse posts and regularly post make sure they are linking to new content to help give it a boost.
The maintenance of your backlinks is a task that needs regular attention. Even if you are just checking in every month.
Include links to old posts in sales and marketing campaigns
If you invest time in email marketing and pay per click then you could be cherry picking your posts that are best suited to your target audience by adding a backlink to posts where appropriate.
Republish on platforms like Medium and LinkedIn articles
If you want to target a pre-established platform of readers with established category content then try medium or even linked in articles as a way to reach a wider audience. This is so easy it is basically just copy and paste.
Um, aren't you forgetting about Google duplicated content penalties?
Not at all, but there is a step to take that is important.
It's a well-established fact the Google does not like duplicate content. that is when that content does not honor the original author and source of that content.
What Google has to say on the matter, on their own dedicate republishing page, is this., “Google will always show the version we think is the most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you prefer. However, it is helpful that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article.”
So effectively if you need to post a duplicate article then you need to be linking back to the original article too.
Learn more about Google's policy on duplicate content.
Hey, see what I just did there :D
Another step you can take is to include the canonical tag in your page header to ensure Google recognise you as the original author as the page the content is originally published.
Tips for republishing
Stay ahead with data
Keep a content inventory, You need to know the value of your posts, How much traffic they are generating, do this by maintaining a spreadsheet with data about the topic of the post and the kind of engagement it is generating.
Good metrics to track include:
- Goal conversion rate such as email signups.
- How many social shares.
- How many backlinks per x no of visitors.
- Time spent on the page.
- The bounce rate.
Keep In mind the 80 20 rule.
It is actually fascinating how much the 80 20 rule can be applied so so much in life. Marketing is no exception and neither is your blog.
Basically, the 80 20 rule is that 20% of your efforts translate to 20% of your results. In the case of a blog, this means that 20% of your posts are generating 80% of your traffic.
The reason it would be useful to keep this in mind is that if you're going to be republishing your blog content then it can be useful to see which of your blog posts are generating the most engagement or whatever positive action you are wanting your users to take.
These are the posts you should be looking to republish first.