At some point or another we all write one of those posts that will quickly become dated, not relevant, or no longer useful to our readers. Typically, this type of post carries very relevant information at the time they are written and from my experience become top performers.

When a dated post becomes out of date and continues to receive fresh visitors, how do you make the post still relevant to those people? One of the keys to keeping visitors on our site longer and turning them into readers is by providing timeless information that will help them, whenever they happen to come upon the post.

The fix is to revive your dated posts with timeless content.

Make an In-Post Update

Create an updated section within your post to give further information with timeless content.

• Research timeless resources on the same subject and link to those resources.
• Offer links to further, timeless resources within your blog. This can include links to similar subjects, the same subject, or comments pertaining to the subject.

The goal with this structure is just to provide further information. Keep it short and simple.

Make a New Post

Nearly every subject can have something written about it that it timeless. If you’ve written a dated post that receives a ton of traffic your best bet is probably to create a brand new post on the subject.

Gather up all the information you can on the subject, draw new conclusions, form timeless opinions to the subject matter, and write your post. Ensure that you’re being helpful because heavily trafficked post are usually ones that visitors want to consider helpful to their current need or interest.

• Mention the older post in your updated post.
• Pack your new post with as much useful information as you did the dated post.
• Provide resources for more information on the same subject and talk about why you chose those resources for the best information on the same subject.

Once you have created your new post, go back to the dated post and include a link to the new post in a very prominent spot. You want more than just a pingback to an older post; place the link to the new post in a place that the visitors will see you have clearly updated the information.

What Not to Do

You don’t want to mess up any performance this out dated post is giving you. With that, here’s a few what not to dos.

• Don’t delete your older post. Anything that is producing traffic for your site you don’t want to remove.
• Don’t redirect the URL. Visitors will be expecting to see the same information they came across. Redirection in this case could cause confusion and have your visitor leave without ever reading.
• Don’t modify key structures of the post i.e. post titles, headers, keywords, and links. These items are relevant to the post being found and dated information becomes useful when it has an updated information.

Final Thoughts

The very point of updating your dated posts is simply to show that you’re interested in the needs of your visitors. By keeping normal blog posts timeless and providing dated/newsworthy posts, you’re packing a lot of punch for your visitors.

When you create a new post to your dated post, you’re generating more page views and retaining your visitors longer. Additionally, the update has shown that you’re paying attention to what you offer and ensuring that you’re always doing your best to be helpful.

Do you have posts that should be updated with timeless content? Perhaps you have already updated dated posts with timeless content, did you have success in getting your visitors to view the timeless content?

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