16 ways to drive traffic to old blog posts to double your blog income (+ free pdf checklist)

Recently I started updating old blog posts for SEO. Yep, I’m focusing on optimizing what I’ve already written over finding new traffic. I’ve written over 600 posts (!) over the past ≠ 2 years on nonimay.com and I’m not 100% happy with every post anymore. Times change.

Keeping this guide in mind, it’s not all about traffic as a professional blogger but yeah, it’s a great feeling to know that people read what you write about right?

But the sad truth is, most people only read your most recent posts if you don’t (cross) promote your blog posts right, so it’s time to spice old blog posts up to explode your traffic.

Getting started with updating old blog posts

Updating old blog posts is a ton of work, especially if you have more than 100+ blog posts on your site, so make sure you download the checklist so you’re not doing things twice.

If you update your blog posts the right way, you’ll also see a spark in income. I updated an old blog post the right way, and I’ve seen great results from it, from newsletter subscribers to course sales.

When you think about it, it makes sense. Over time your offers change, maybe you went from making money as a blogger from ads but now you’re creating your own online courses.

You only started to promote them in your most recent posts, but when you update your SEO following the next steps, you’re leaving money on the table when you don’t add your offer to those blog posts!

Here’s how to drive traffic to old blog posts by updating old blog posts for SEO and more:

• Add Pinterest friendly images to blog posts. This way, others can share your (older) blog posts too! Remember, for Pinterest we need vertical images.
• Add related posts and start deep linking. I personally love it when I read a blog post and the blogger directs me to similar posts within the article because I probably want to know more about that subject! If you write about one subject a lot, you most likely have similar posts that are totally interesting for people! Include these links in your old(er) blog posts and you might score yourself a couple of more page views per person per day!

• Get yourself up to date with the latest SEO trends and update old posts accordingly. Use long tail keywords. Add more SEO friendly post titles. Add SEO friendly tags and check your YOAST SEO plugin color code, are they all green? Don’t forget your ALT descriptions of photos! Tip: sort your posts on SEO YOAST score, and start with the posts that have no focus point assigned, to include them in the wonderful world of SEO!
• Make sure you add your newly created Pinterest images to multiple Tribes on Tailwind to maximize your traffic!
• Republish your old blog posts that deserve a spotlight. Check if this is SEO friendly of course, but usually, it is worth it to republish the best of your blog if those awesome articles were written like, years and years ago. More on the most up to date information on SEO here.
• The days of 200-word articles are behind us my friend, so update your short blog posts and create in-depth articles. Just like Google loves them. You probably know much more anyways, so updating informative posts shouldn’t be difficult. If you’re updating older reviews or stories/diary entries, add more photos and forward people to related posts.
• People don’t read anymore. So make sure your blog posts are written in tiny paragraphs of max. 5 sentences. Make posts scannable. This is a lot of work and I’ve recently started to do this and it’s so much work but it’s worth it! I already saw a huge increase in page views and time!
• Make sure you utilize plugins for WordPress that you need. You can find my favorite plugins here. I recommend Grammarly – which makes proofreading the easiest!
• Add the repolished blog posts to your CoSchedule library and send them out regularly.
• Create an ‘Start here’, ‘most popular’ and ‘best of’ section in respectively your menu, your sidebar and on Pinterest. People love you to send them directly to your best post, so make it easy for them to find them. An archive can be pretty overwhelming with 500+ posts, so I’m helping with these sections and I love having popular posts that every visitor at least once reads! Roundup posts and lists referring people to your old posts work very well to shine some light on old posts!

I must admit, it’s quite an assignment to get familiar with your own 500+ archives, but if you can’t, how do you expect your readers will right? And before you go in, make sure you download the checklist so you can take it one blog post at a time and never look back.

P.S. Sign-up for my free 3-part video training to help you live a life you love, without constantly stressing and checking your Google Analytics. Goodbye $0.01 Adsense days, Hello $150 days. The video series is designed to help you set up and create a profitable blog, without only focusing on growing your audience. Or read on: Do you want to know how to make money blogging with a small audience? or know about 40 ways to promote your blog posts for free.

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• Why your blog isn’t successful
• The Complete Guide to: making money blogging when you have a small following