Damn, I felt like writing today… mainly because I haven’t posted an article on the blog for a few days, as I’ve been deep into updating my old articles…
…and while updating I noticed something pretty cool – the updated articles moved up in search almost immediately.
I’ve been blogging almost daily for the past several years and never thought about the articles I wrote in the beginning, always been concentrating mainly on producing fresh content.
About a month ago, though, I was checking my real time traffic and noticed several of my old articles had been getting me the most search traffic for the past 2-3 years. This is most likely the situation with your blog as well. I also noticed they were getting traffic but nothing more that that.
I updated them and they moved up a few spots in search almost the next day, turns our Google love old authoritative articles that get updated regularly, yet again they only got traffic and no leads whatsoever.
Then I started displaying ‘last updated’ instead of ‘published on’ and things really got interesting. I recently wrote an article whether to post publish dates or not and what happens when you show ‘last updated’, here’s the link to it:
https://wealthmagnate.com/to-publish-post-dates-or-not-to-publish-post-dates/
Once I noticed the traffic spikes and how many more leads I started getting, I was like:
“this is huge, I have to write a blog about it, so you could double your traffic in 3 days too”
That’s how long it took me to double mine… well, to be honest I did not quite double it, but started getting way more traffic than I used to.
How to display ‘last updated’ and what happens when you do.
If you use Genesis there is of course a pretty cool plugin for the purpose called Genesis Simple Edits, if not, you have to code that shit, search Google if you don’t know how to code it, it’s simple and nothing to waste time on now… what I think is more important is what happens when you show ‘last updated’:
– Google displays that date, which makes the article fresh and current instead of old and outdated (that’s how it looks to people when showing the published date even if you update it daily)
– People spend way more time at your blog, they know:
“if this old article gets updated this often, this blog is worth reading”
Đ¢his is what happened to my blog, and when people spend more time at your blog, good things happen, I’ll tell you about them later.
How to spot the articles that bring you the most traffic
Install Wordfence Security (or any real time traffic plugin of your choice) and start checking your live traffic
It will take you a few days to spot the most visited articles, once you see what they are, go back and update them.
How to update the articles
Don’t just hit update and leave, do the following instead:
1 Pimp the title (if it’s something boring)
2 Add more content
3 link to your new articles, or relevant such on other sites
4 Write sequels and link to them, then link back from those sequels.
Sequels to 3 year old articles are mad powerful, when you link them all together you create a powerful blog with lots of internal relevant links, and also turn those articles into something like guides.
What happens when people start spending more time on your blog
1 Google ranks your articles even better
2 You get more leads (or clicks, whatever you’ve optimized your site for)
3 You get more deal proposals
Let me tell you about that last one.
I don’t sell ads on this blog (only selected few could get through), yet lately I’ve been getting loads of offers to write sponsored content, or link to specific pages from my first page articles.
Why is that?
Well, I told you how those old articles moved up in search, but that doesn’t only mean more traffic and leads, but also more people wanting to leverage that traffic.
I know, I haven’t thought about that too.
The other day I got an offer to link to a service from someone who had spotted several of my first page, spot one articles doing keyword research. I rejected the offer, it was dumb, and you know I run this blog for you, yet that made me think how lucrative old articles that get updated could be.
Old articles are the bomb, to be honest with you, not too long ago I considered them outdated and nothing to waste time on, and it turned out they can be more valuable than fresh content.
If you have more than 20+ articles, you can use this insignificant, yet powerful, technique to double your traffic in no time.
If you don’t have that many articles, you should write them as fast as you can, you can see how powerful blogging is…
…and here’s what to read if you want to kill your servers with traffic:
https://wealthmagnate.com/?s=traffic
Let me know if you liked this article and stay awesome.
Vladi
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The Science of Saying Nothing… Or How To Write Stupid Long Articles Everybody Wants To Read
