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Editing Old Blog Posts

7th January 2017

For the past month or so, whenever I’ve had a spare few minutes, I do a little bit of blog admin. This is a combination of a whole load of different things (which I’ll go into in another post soon); but today I wanted to chat specifically about the process about editing my old blog posts.

If anyone reads this and thinks, ‘Nahhh,  I’m nostalgic and want to keep my old blog posts exactly as they are‘ – that’s fine! I totally get this. However I do think there are a few good reasons for going back over your old content and making it as good as possible.

Updating photos –

As time goes by, we (hopefully) get a lot better with our photography; and this means some of our very old blog posts can look absolutely shoddy compared to our latest ones. While this is fine for the most part, and even nice to see how far we’ve come – it could be damaging potentially evergreen posts. By evergreen, I mean blog posts you can promote again and again over time, that are always relevant. For example, if you have a post on your ‘Best Blog Tips’, this could be a fantastic blog post that readers would love to visit even years later; but if the photo isn’t appealing, less people will click. So have a look through your archive and make sure your best blog posts have the best photographs!

 

Products featured –

I’ve found a lot of these I’ve had to keep the same to be honest. However, there are one or two product reviews I like to keep updated, as they are still popular and still bring traffic. So it’s always worth going back and checking your review is still relevant, written well, and features a handy link for people to buy it themselves.

 

Link checking –

So important! Checking your old links aren’t broken and dead is so, so good for your blog. Also if you’ve done posts that are related/based on similar subjects, it could be great to link them to each other and improve your DA while you’re there.

 

Gathering evergreen posts –

Back to the evergreen posts! This has been my favourite part of editing old blog posts. I’ve had a chance to go through almost four years of posts, and I realised I have a lot of content I still love, that I never promote anymore. I’ve started changing this, and I feel so proud of myself now for creating such a world of content! I even have a bookmarks file on my browser for all my favourite posts now, old or new. It’s handy to have, when I want to schedule tweets and don’t want the same thing going out all the time.

 

More to feature –

New readers who visit your blog will discover so much more of your fantastic content if you’ve kept it all up to date and really appealing. It also means if you have features on your blog like ‘Popular posts’ or a feature that showcases random posts through your archive (like the one I have at the very top of my blog!) – then it’s never going to show something that you’re a bit embarrassed by now. I mean that blog post moaning about your mum three years ago might not be what you want on your blog these days, but that’s your call! Haha 🙂

 

I’ve absolutely loved updating my old posts, and I’m nowhere near done yet. I’ve outright deleted some too, that were REALLY outdated, written terribly, about old products, or I just don’t like anymore. My blog now feels all fresh, new, and full of good stuff. Yay! As I say it’s totally your call and this only really applies to some styles of blog of course. If your blog is a personal diary recording your life, you won’t want to change it; and that’s wonderful! However, if you do think think could be for you, I hope you’ve found this post helpful.

Good luck guys!

 

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  1. Thanks for the advice, I’ve been a blogger for 2 years but haven’t really kept up with it. So i scrapped the old blog and created a new one. I’m pinning this!

  5. This is so true! I also think its helpful for when you update your blog layout, I found that out with mine when I changed it that some of the posts images and writing were all over the place in the new layout update so went through them all to check them and edit them to make sure they were in their correct place, so I agree it is definitely worth doing! It can even be useful for generating some new ideas for your blog too 😀

    VioletDaffodils xx

  6. This is definitely something I need to get better at. I have started gradually sorting out my broken links. That’s a good idea about gathering evergreen posts! I might do that on my evernote, good idea batman. I think I might add it to my to do list each month – maybe fix a few each time. Great post my lovely, thank you 🙂

    Honestly Aine

  10. I have a question about the photography and changing images. If you change the images on an old post and that image had been pinned many times, when people click on the old image will it still take them to the post? x

  13. I always do this when I have some spare time on my hands. I must have gone back over old posts and re-written things, taken new photos etc. a million and one times I swear!
    It’s not that I’m unhappy with how things are, it’s more that in life you always progress. So it’s important to show that in what you do.

    Some great tips here on some extra little things I hadn’t thought to look at!

    Alys
    http://www.alysgeorge.co.uk

  15. I do this! Way more frequently now too. I’ve not even had my blog two years yet but when I started I definitely didn’t have a clue what I was doing compared to now where I have a niche and direction, so I like to refresh the old blog posts and repromote them. Thanks for sharing your tips!

    Y x The Sweet Seven Five