High visitor traffic is a primary signal that people find value in your content. It also indicates that the same subject will perform well in a different medium, such as an infographic or video. However, you should consider other key performance indicators (KPIs) as well.
For instance, let’s say you notice a particular page is crushing it on traffic. But, its bounce rate (the percent of visits to a page that only resulted in a single pageview) is high, and time-on-page (the average time a visitor spends on the page) is low. This combination of KPIs indicated that there is an opportunity to adapt the content to make it more actionable and valuable for your audience.
Ultimately, you want to leverage your site’s analytics to steer your content strategy. Also, consider the 80/20 rule: 80 percent of your traffic will likely come from 20 percent of your content. Keeping this rule in mind will help direct your attention to the most high-value blog posts worth repurposing.
Why You Should Repurpose Content
For many people, the most profound benefit of repurposing content is time savings. From inception to completion, a high-value blog post generally takes five to ten hours. And, before you say, “Hey, ChatGPT does it in a matter of seconds,” know that that content doesn’t rank particularly well without human intervention. Reason being, it doesn’t follow Google’s E-E-A-T criteria:
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Expertise
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Experience
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Authoritativeness
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Trustworthiness
ChatGPT is an excellent tool for outlining posts, ensuring you have a comprehensive overview of a topic, and idea generation. But when it comes to producing people-first content, those who put fingers to keys will typically outperform their fully AI-reliant counterparts.
So, for those putting in the effort to produce high-value, high-quality blog posts, repurposing them can be the key to a successful and sustainable content strategy. But the benefits extend beyond just time-savings. Repurposing content can help you:
There are seemingly endless ways to repurpose content. But you need to determine what methods best align with your goals, resources, and brand.
Lastly, before diving into seven ways you can repose content, remember to consider this approach an iterative process. If repurposing a blog post into a YouTube video takes too much time, consider an infographic. If transforming a blog post’s main points into an Instagram carousel yields the results you want, lean into it. Just make sure you’re using data as a guiding light.
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Update Content in Outperforming Blog Posts
Let’s start with the simplest way to repurpose a blog post: update its content. First, use your site’s metrics to determine the best performers. Second, find any antiquated insights and outdated data. You may even have time-specific posts like “2022’s Comprehensive Guide to Spring Cleaning Guide” or “5 Tips to Help Your Business Survive the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
If you have statistics from sources ten years or older, we’d recommend scrapping those entirely. With the pace at which industries evolve, even five years is iffy. Whenever possible, Ethos recommends using data that doesn’t date back more than three years.
We also recommend documenting the changes you made. Indicating an update can be as simple as stating the original publishing date and the new one. Doing so can help build trust with your readers as well. On one of our high-performing blog posts titled, “How Many Drinks Should I Have At A Business Meeting or Happy Hour?” we added editor’s notes so readers are confident in how up-to-date the research is.
Depending on the topic, it may be worth comparing your old facts and figures with the new ones to highlight major changes in your field.
2. Add Content to Blog Posts
Adding content is a great way to boost traffic on underperforming and outperforming blog posts. If you’re striving to make high-impact changes, start with your best performers and work your way back.
Beyond looking at traffic signals, consider the easability of updating the content. For instance, listicles are basically teed up for additional content. If you currently have a post such as “7 Cocktails You Need to Make this Summer” or “8 Tips to Win Your Next Construction Client,” add new cocktails or add some additional tips.
Pro-tip: Be strategic about the URL for new listicles. We recommend not including the number in the slug. For instance, in a post titled “7 Real Estate Questions You’ve Wanted to Ask,” we’d make the URL slug /real-estate-questions-you’ve-wanted-to-ask. Doing so allows you to add content later while still including critical keywords.
Older blog posts are often never freshened up with new content. Not only is this a missed opportunity for diving deeper into a topic, but it also means those blog posts are severely lacking in internal links to your latest work. For that reason, as you add content, find opportunities to connect old blog posts with the new.
If you’re looking for a quick and effective way to add content, consider adding leadership quotes into the mix. Reach out to industry peers or an in-house specialist. It’s a great way to generate new ideas and add more credibility to the content you already have.