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Are you worried about revising blog posts that you wrote a few years back? Think it’s dishonest or underhanded? Read on to find out why you should embrace editing your blog content, regardless of when you wrote it.
What’s included in this post
What a blog is
A blog is simply a collection of web pages.
Just like other web pages on your site, blog posts include an H1 heading (the blog-post title) and text. You can add additional headings, buttons, links and other audiovisual material, as well as SEO-friendly meta data and alt-text in images to improve accessibility. Unlike other pages on your site, blog posts are organized in a way that makes the content more accessible for readers, perhaps via some or all of the following:
How the search engines find blog content
When a user types a query into the search engines, those search engines scour visible web pages all over the world for signs of relevance.
The likes of Google don’t give a damn about:
What they are interested in is whether you’ve published content that’s relevant to a search query. So a blog post with keywords and phrases that align with a user’s query will rank higher in the search results. They’re also interested in how long users stay on that page, and what they do when they leave it. When people stick around on a particular page, that’s a signal that you’ve offered a good user experience. And if you create links from a blog post to other pages on your website (for example, another blog post, a resource library or your editorial services page) that a user finds interesting and so doesn’t bounce out of your website, that’s another indication that you’re providing relevant solutions to the searcher’s problems. The more relevant pages you have on your site, the more likely they are to be listed higher up the results of a search query, and the more likely you are to be visited by that ideal client who clicks through. Why there’s no such thing as an ‘old’ blog post
Given that blog posts are just web pages, and that relevant web pages are more likely to be found by the search engines and listed in the search results, a really useful blog post – one that answers a question often posed by searchers – will be visible and valuable even if it was written years ago.
In that sense, there’s no such thing as an ‘old’ blog post. Remember, Google doesn’t care about the date of publication; it cares only about how relevant your content is to a search query. The question editor bloggers therefore need to ask themselves is: Do you want people finding content on your business website that
If the answer’s no, it’s critical that you frame your blogging mindset in terms of ‘what’, not ‘when’. Historical record or a reflection of your business’s values?
None of us would dream of including an old phone number or email address on our contact page, or an editorial service that we no longer provide on our services page, or a logo we’ve long since abandoned on our home page.
That’s because we don’t consider our contact, services or home pages to be historical records of what once was. Rather, the content on those pages reflects our business as it is now. The same applies to a blog. This is merely a collection of other web pages on your site, and so it needs to be treated similarly. Every blog post needs to be regarded as if it were published yesterday. Blog content is therefore current. That content is a reflection of your business and your brand values as they are today. Even if that content was published ten years ago. Certainly, some written materials are historical records – a journal article published in 1969, the first edition of a book, the minutes of a meeting – but editors' blogs are not. And so if you have blog content on your website that doesn’t reflect your business brand as it is now, it’s time to update it. Your website is your business shop front, the digital land that you own and control. And you have a duty to preserve its integrity. What about content written by guests?
When you offer guests the opportunity to write for your blog, you're giving them access to your platform.
YOUR platform. It’s still your land, your business shop front, and it’s you, not your guest, who is responsible for that space. You therefore still have the right to preserve your website’s integrity. And if that means some sort of intervention, so be it. If you’re now uncomfortable with the content – even though you weren’t when you published it – decide on the most appropriate way to ensure it reflects your business’s brand values. How you might update your blog content
The decisions you make about your blog content are the same as those you’d make for the content on any other web page on your site.
Revision You might choose to edit existing content so that it’s up to date and accessible. Revision’s a great option for posts that rank high in the search engines for particular queries, and drive potential clients to your website. You get to keep your findability but ensure your existing brand is intact. Do make sure these valuable posts link to other relevant content on your website. Deletion You might decide to delete entire posts, thereby removing those web pages from your site. Deletion’s a good option for the following types of blog content:
Repurpose You might decide to rewrite, using the same theme but bringing your current experience into play. Repurposing’s a good option for when your original blog post tackled a theme that’s relevant to the kind of people you want to visit your website, but you need a complete rewrite to ensure the content’s bang up to date and reflects your editorial business’s brand values. Might you tag out-of-date posts as archive material instead?
Tagging blog content as archived material rather than updating it is not a solution because it’s still visible.
And website visitors often scan content, and so likely won’t notice the date or an archive marker. Instead, they’ll search for the solution they originally came to the post for. If that material’s out of date, the damage is done because what they're reading isn't reflecting your current brand values. There are online online archives, and those serve a purpose, but that’s not the purpose of your editorial blog. Your blog posts, like every other page on your website, should show potential clients why you’re a great fit for each other now. Summing up
Edit your blog content with alacrity! It’s not just okay to do so; it’s essential to do so. Editorial business websites tell our potential clients:
Every single web page on our site needs to reflect that messaging. And since blog posts are just web pages, they should be current and relevant. Out-of-date blog content screams out-of-date business. That has no place in any editor’s marketing strategy. And the date a blog post was published is irrelevant because that’s not what determines its findability. It’s relevance to a search query is what makes it visible. And if it’s visible, it’s visible now. Happy revising! Related training resources
About Louise Harnby
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
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