Making the most of your content: repurposing for relevancy and without damaging organic traffic

Audiences are far more likely to want to read your latest piece of published content over articles written several months or years ago. Consistently creating a variety of optimised content should, therefore, form an essential part of your overall digital strategy.

The pressures of consistent idea generation and content creation can, however, sometimes feel overwhelming, impossible and a total time drain. This is why it's important to remember that your back catalogue of content doesn't have to needlessly be doomed to languish 20 pages deep in your website's blog. It is possible to reuse topics and repurpose pieces to boost their relevancy, reach new audiences and just generally out-perform your past self.

Identifying Reusable Content

Ignore the notion that it's possible to repurpose every piece of content you have ever written. Although it might sound a bit harsh, you simply cannot and should not consider repurposing your entire back catalogue. Not only will this be incredibly dull and lead to an array of unnecessary repetition, it will also do absolutely nothing for - and potentially even harm - your precious and hard-earned organic traffic.

As we can all agree that you definitely don't want to undo the work required to build solid levels of organic traffic, let's focus on identifying the types of content that are practically crying out to be repurposed.

Make It Evergreen

Yes, that's right, your content repurposing word to remember is, to borrow the immortal words of Will Young from his early 00s hit song that we know you remember; EVERGREEN. The beauty of evergreen content is that it is always valuable and relevant despite the inevitable changes happening in the wider corporate and cultural landscapes.

Imagine you have a three-year-old article entitled 'Four Ways Online Video Will Change the Marketing Landscape'. Although you clearly couldn't publish this piece now and claim it as current, this original article is now an interesting piece of recent industry history that is essentially asking for commentary from a contemporary perspective.

By adopting a slightly different approach and creating a new article entitled 'Four Ways Online Video Has Changed the Marketing Landscape', you are instantly giving yourself the opportunity to create something fresh, comment on whether your predictions materialised in the ways you expected and include a couple of internal links that will direct traffic back to the original article.

Repurposing the Popular

Evergreen content doesn't have to be your only source of reusable content. Take a few moments to have a look at your most popular pieces of content. Pull up your analytics data, look at any comments you received and ask yourself why these pieces in particular performed so well. Do they contain information that you could present in a similarly engaging way, perhaps reaching new audiences in the process? If the answer is yes, you're already in the starting blocks and ready to start repurposing.

Repurposing older content is a valid and effective strategy that many businesses are afraid to pursue. If we've piqued your interest with our belief in the power of reusing content and you're keen to ease the pressures on content delivery, why not give us a call today to find out how we can help you transform your strategy, increase your shareability, and boost your reach.