How to Make Your Blog Archives Work for You

If you’ve been blogging for awhile, chances are that you’ve racked up a pretty decent blog archive. But what happens to your posts after you publish a new one? Do they just float off into the abyss, never to be seen or heard from again?

That certainly isn’t what you want to have happen! Make your blog archives work for you! You’ve worked hard on each of those posts; they should continue to garner traffic to your blog. Don’t allow your old posts to sit and collect dust. Instead, follow these tips to keep your past blog posts bringing new visitors to your site.

1. Audit your past content.

Whether you’ve recently taken your blog in a new direction, you’ve rebranded your blog’s image, or you simply haven’t looked through old posts in awhile, it’s a good idea to take some time to go through and audit all of your old posts. Do your old posts cater to your targeted audience? When a reader sees one of your images on Pinterest, can they tell that it’s from your blog? Do your posts flow together? These are a few questions to ask yourself while auditing your old posts. Not sure what an audit means? Take these few steps in order to keep your blog posts on the right track.

Rebrand old images.

You will want to create a template that all of your blog images will use in order to keep your brand the same throughout your blog. Choose two (maybe three) fonts to use consistently throughout all of your images and design an image that will keep your text & logo in the same area. (I use PhotoShop now, but Paintbrush for Mac is a great app that I’ve used for years!) If you’re interested in other free online tools, there are tons out there: Canva, PicMonkey, and GIMP to name a few.

Here are a few bloggers who do a great job of this for inspiration:

– by Regina
– The Daily Positive
– Vidaluxe Studio
– Jennypurr

Delete old posts that are no longer relevant.

It’s inevitable that sometimes our blogs change paths. Hell, mine definitely has. It started out as a DIY blog turned mommy blog turned lifestyle blog turned blogging/social media blog. It has been all over the place. And there are definitely some posts of mine that just do not fit with my vision anymore.

However, if you’re super attached to your old blog posts like I am to mine, you don’t have to completely delete them. I just revert my old posts to drafts so that I still have access to them–just nobody else does!

Edit old posts.

Did you write a post awhile ago on a topic that is still completely relevant to your blog but looking back, it just kind of sucks and now you understand why nobody read it? Make some tweaks, put in your new and improved voice, extend the length, add in some narrative, and voila! It’s just like a brand new post again!

2. Re-share your old posts.

I bet that you didn’t know that it’s totally legal in the blog world to share your posts more than once. Even more than twice, or three times. In fact, you can keep sharing your old posts for months and years to come! I promise you, no blogging police are going to come knocking on your door because you tweeted a link to last year’s Facebook tips post.

Re-share on social media.

CoSchedule created this awesome little graphic that lets you know just how legal it is to share your posts on social media multiple times. Check it out:

Not only that, but there are a couple of awesome online tools that will automate sending out posts from your archives for you:

– Revive Old Post WordPress Plugin
– Edgar

Re-share in your email newsletter.

If you send out an email newsletter to subscribers, that is a great way to get new attention to old content. Instead of including a section only for your recent posts, you could do a mixture of new and old posts that newer subscribers and followers may have missed.

You’re gaining new attention to your blog all of the time–don’t allow new followers to miss out on great content just because it was published before their time.

3. Make a part 2 of a popular post.

If you’ve published a post before that you know your audience loved, what better way is there to bring that back to life than to create a part 2? Obviously you won’t want to simply reiterate what you said in your first post, but creating a follow-up post will give you a great opportunity to add on new ideas, stories, and examples.

After you’ve published your part 2 post, make sure that you link back to the first post and vice versa. We’ll cover this in a later point, but inter-linking throughout your blog is a great way to get readers to surf through a number of your posts in one sitting.

One fantastic example of this is SPI’s Backlinking Strategy: Part 1 (2010) and Part 2 (2014).

4. Create a popular posts widget on your sidebar.

Have you scrolled down a blog before and noticed that their sidebar is full of images and/or links to popular, featured, or well-loved past posts? This is a genius idea and if you have a few posts that you know have gotten a good response, then you absolutely need to do this.

Here are a few bloggers who have done a great job creating a popular posts widget that grabs your attention and makes you want to click through to other posts:

– Elle & Company
– by Regina (yes, I know I linked to her blog earlier in this post, but she’s just fantastic!)
– Hello Natural
– The Nectar Collective (I just love how she has her popular posts included at the bottom of the home page and at the end of each blog post.)

There are a number of widgets that will update your popular posts for you automatically or you can use HTML to pick and choose your posts and organize them however you want.

5. Go back and add links to newer relevant posts and vice versa.

I cannot tell you the number of times that I have read a blog post, seen a link to another relevant blog post, clicked it, and basically spent five hours of my life reading post after post. That is because that blogger was smart enough to know when his or her posts are of value and can help the reader on the current post. Also because the blogger is smart enough to understand the power of interlinking.

If you’re new to the word interlinking, here’s the general definition: interlinking is the king of all linking and your number one priority for your blog starting right now. (Just kidding, I won’t even begin to get into the hierarchy of linking.)

However, I am not joking about the seriousness of interlinking. Not only does it boost your search engine rankings and help Google to understand the structure of your site, but it also helps to lower your bounce rate, provides easy navigation for your readers, and greatly increases the chances that you’ll end up with a new subscriber or follower.

If you’ve done some interlinking here and there but have never really gotten into it (and especially if you’re just hearing about interlinking for the first time here and now), then I have a homework assignment for you. Go through your blog posts and figure out which ones are relevant and that you could refer to in other blog posts. You do not want to overdo your interlinking–you want your links to occur smoothly and naturally in your blog posts.

You can see in the image below, screenshotted from Julie Harris Design’s post about investing in your brand, links to three different blog posts of hers, easily included in these three paragraphs.

When you really understand your brand and your blog’s mission, then all of your blog posts should fit together like white on rice and you should have no problem including links to relevant blog posts only when you know that it will help out your reader.

6. Put together a roundup post.

Who doesn’t love a good roundup post? If there are several posts that you’ve written in regards to a similar topic, then a roundup post is an awesome way to put together a giant resource page for your readers.

Roundup posts do really well with recipes, DIYs, blogging resources, and now that I think about it, pretty much any topic that anyone could cover ever. Here are a few examples of great roundup pages that include links from both the author’s blog and other blogs:

– 101 Healthy Lunch Recipes Perfect for Brown-Bagging It by Hello Natural
– 15 Home Organization Projects to a Happier Home by How to Nest for Less
– 20 Handmade Gift Ideas by Two Twenty One

Roundup posts are typically popular posts themselves since they offer such a variety and multitude of information just in one post, so you really can’t go wrong.

7. Create a “Start Here” page.

One thing that I’ve seen several successful bloggers do is create a page dedicated to new readers. This page is usually included in their navigation or in their sidebar in a very conspicuous location–if you’re creating a page for someone who is new to your site, you want her to easily be able to find it.

On this page are categories, images, links to posts, and/or brief descriptions of popular posts and how they can help out a new reader. These pages give new readers to your blog an idea of what they can expect from you and are a great way to get readers to browse through and read multiple posts in one sitting, leading to new subscribers or followers–the ultimate goal, right?

Check out these bloggers who have set up epic “Start Here” pages:

– Leaving Work Behind
– Smart Passive Income
– The Minimalists
– Zen Habits

Do you have any other tips for keeping your blog archives alive and making them work for you? Leave them in the comments!