The secrets to incredible traffic that I've gleaned from four top rated Pinterest courses.
Find out how I tripled my blog traffic in just one month using these 5 top Pinterest strategies! Then implement them, be consistent, and watch your traffic skyrocket too.
How to Promote Old Blog Posts to Reap More Traffic
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I don't know about you, but I put a ton of hard work into each of my blog posts. And to be honest, I don't want them to be one-and-done once they are finished!
One of the most useful things I've noticed about blog traffic is that it grows like a snowball rolling downhill.
Every post you put out there will grab a bit of traffic, and the more you have the faster your traffic will grow.
Many people think that traffic grows linearly (aka if you are growing by 100 visitors per month now, then you will always be growing by about 100 visitors per month).
This couldn't be further from the truth! Traffic grows exponentially like a snowball, and a big part of that is due to your old blog posts.
For that reason, it's pretty easy to see why your older blog posts have a lot to do with your current traffic.
And that means we need to maximize them! I want to squeeze every bit of traffic I can out of each of my blog posts, and in this post I'm going to show you how.
1. Create New Pins for Your Old Posts
The fastest and easiest way to get fresh traffic to an old blog post is to create new Pinterest pins for it.
Pinterest ranks new pins leading to old posts a bit lower than new pins leading to new posts, but you can still see a nice boost from using this strategy!
I like to rotate through my older posts, and have my virtual assistant create two to three pins for each one. The key here is to get really intentional with your keywords.
Check your Tailwind stats to see how the old pins for that post did! Did they get a lot of repins? Can you find that pin close to the top of Pinterest search for that keyword?
If the pin did well and is ranking towards the top, I use the same keywords from that pin in my new pins. The more pins you can get to rank near the top, the more traffic you will see!
Now what happens if those original pins didn't do so well?
Well, now you get a second chance! If my original pins didn't bring in much traffic or rank very well, that is when I will go back and look for new keywords to use on the new pins in hopes of ranking better this time.
So how exactly do you find the right keywords?
I've written a ton about Pinterest SEO and keywording, and you can check that out here to get a clearer picture of exactly how to find keywords that will bring in lots of traffic:
- Pinterest SEO Tips for Blog Traffic
- The Viral Pin Formula Every Blogger Should Know
- How to Get Your Pins Seen on Pinterest
- Why Pinterest Isn’t Growing Your Blog
So to wrap up, my first tip is to start creating new pins for your old blog posts. I don't have a set schedule for this, but I typically will create new pins for one old post every week or so.
This really depends on how many blog posts you have! If you have more than 100, you may want to create a new pin each day. If you have fewer posts, a new pin or two per week should do just fine.
2. Update and Republish Older Posts
My second secret hack to squeezing more traffic out of my older blog posts is to update and republish them.
Yep, that's a thing! And it's a really good idea.
If you've ever looked back on your older blog posts and cringed a little at how not great they are, you aren't alone. But that doesn't mean they need to stay that way!
One of the most helpful tips I learned from Bob Berger’s FinCon speech was that updating and republishing his old posts were one of the most important things he did to grow his business exponentially.
Not only does this make your content ever better and more useful to your readers (which leads to more credibility and sales down the road), updating and republishing also looks good to Google and other search engines.
When Google can see that you are updating your content to be the best it possibly can be, and not just leaving old posts to die off, they see you as much more of an authority in your space.
I try to go back and update one or two posts per month as time allows. This is certainly a bit time-consuming, and can take almost as much time as creating a new blog post in some cases. But the good news is that often times you only need to add a paragraph or so, and make a few simple updates to bring the post back to life.
So how exactly do you re-publish an old post in WordPress?
That's a great question! I had no idea either.
All you need to do is click the publish button on the post you want to update. Then in the right hand corner where it gives you the option to publish immediately or at a date, simply change the date to one that is in the future.
3. SEO Older Posts So Google Can Rank Them
The third way I snag more traffic from a post I've already worked hard on going back and adding solid SEO strategies to the post.
I don't know about you, but when I was first getting started I really wasn't worried about SEO. I was just trying to get off the ground!
If that's you too, now is a great time to go back and start adding a few SEO strategies to your post. I like to do this when I update and republish older posts.
If you can roll all of this into one, it becomes a lot easier and you don't need to go back to that post as many times!
So what kind of SEO strategies should you implement?
The first thing I always check is that my blog post has a main keyword. And not just any keyword!
I've started using the KGR method , which if you've never heard of it is a really cool SEO strategy.
The KGR method is a method for finding keywords that have some search volume but very few search results. I've just started implementing this strategy in the last few weeks, so I'll try to update you on how it is going a few months from now. So far, the strategy looks promising.
The second SEO piece I look for is to make sure that my keyword is properly placed throughout the post. I use the free Yoast plugin to make sure that I'm getting them all placed correctly.
Yoast is a bit finicky, but as long as you follow the instructions they give you everything will be fine.
Yoast will ensure that your keyword is placed in the title, subtitles, meta data, and slug, which is really important to the Google algorithm. Of course, there is so, so much more to the Google algorithm than just getting your keywords right.
But it's good to know that your keywords are the foundation to start with and everything else flows from there.
4. Create A YouTube Video For The Post
My fourth suggestion for getting fresh traffic to an old blog post is to create a YouTube video for it!
I haven't quite gotten to this step myself, but good news! I'm starting a YouTube channel and I really hope it helps all of you visual learners out there.
Here's a few things to keep in mind about video.
First, Google ranks blog posts with multimedia higher than blog posts that are just text. Adding video, podcast episodes, and images really ups the value of your post. This is likely a longer-term game than creating new pins for your post, but it can really add up!
The second thing to keep in mind is that you can upload these videos to YouTube and start getting more traffic that way as well. The important thing to keep in mind with YouTube is that you want to keyword your video properly, and get right to the point in your video.
Don't take too long to get to the meat of it! YouTube is owned by Google and really wants to see that people stick with your video and hopefully watch more of the ones you've created after that.
The third thing to keep in mind is that video creates credibility. There's something about being able to see and hear someone that forms a connection between humans so much more than just reading text by them. Creating videos not only brings more traffic to your old blog posts, but it also increases your credibility and trustworthiness as a creator overall.
5. Share Your Older Posts Again on Social Media
My last tip is to simply share your older blog posts on social media again!
Don't worry, it is very unlikely that anyone is going to remember that you’ve already posted it once months ago. And even if they do, that's okay!
I highly recommend keeping a master list of all of your blog posts and rotating through them with your social media posts.
Social media is much more short-lived than search engines like Pinterest and Google, but they are great for bringing older content back to the surface for people who haven't seen all of your posts.
And let's be honest, almost none of your followers have checked out all of your posts!
Just be sure to give the social post some new text and maybe a new image to go with the post.
Conclusion
Leveraging your past blog posts for new fresh traffic is something every smart blogger does. Don't let your posts be one and done!
They are valuable, useful, and will help keep bringing you traffic for years to come if leveraged properly. These are my best tips for making use of your older posts:
- Create new pins for your older posts
- Update and republish them
- SEO older posts so they start ranking (use KGR method)
- Add a Youtube video for additional traffic
- Share each older post on social media in a fresh way
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