Whenever you create content, it has specific goals and audiences, but over time these may change. That’s when content recycling comes in handy, by either enriching the content or fundamentally changing it to increase its value.
It is worth mentioning that in English this procedure is called repurposing (purpose=objective). Recycling content can add value to your message by reinforcing it in new ways or making it relevant to current reality
Over time, your blogs or other forms of publishing become outdated and don’t have the SEO power they once did. However, this does not mean that all your work has been wasted. Repurposing content is a way to take the content you’ve already published and revitalize it to work better for you. This way, you can reach people you missed the first time around, and you save time because you’re not writing from scratch.
Search engine optimization is a complex endeavor because in order to land on the first page of Google, we have to consider many criteria. Content recycling is definitely one way to help our SEO.
Suppose you have one blog post that generates a lot of traffic, why not create an infographic and a video based on it? This way you will increase organic traffic with a minimal investment of time and money.
When you repurpose your old blogs, for example, you have the opportunity to put your SEO knowledge to good use. Perhaps some keywords were gaining popularity when you wrote the blog, but that’s not the case now. You can rework your blog to include more current keywords.
You’ve decided that some of your content can be reused to better help your site, but where do you start? There are several steps you can take to develop a content repurposing strategy.
Always start with clear goals. Why are you repurposing your content? Repurposing your content is perfectly fine if your goals have changed. For example, if you’ve launched a new product that also qualifies for women, for example, and your most-read blog posts are aimed solely at men, it’s worth thinking about recycling. A redesign might include editing keywords, links, descriptions, headlines, and so on. Repurposing may involve changing the entire intent of the content.
Start by finding the content that best fits your current goals. Do you want to reach a specific audience or sell more of a specific service? The best repurposed articles are those that provide a gateway to those goals. For example, maybe you want to sell your online course. Start with content that is about online personal development or posts that describe the course.
Do you have content that is hotly debated or your organic traffic numbers are skyrocketing? Above all, keep in mind such content, commonly known as “evergreen”. If you enrich and update posts that are still popular, you will increase their effectiveness.
E.g. if your business has a Facebook account and it’s just passed a year since you published some interesting post, e.g. your restaurant was bursting at the seams, why not republish it and add a comment: “And a year ago it was like this”. This will help you reach a new audience, and it doesn’t cost you anything.
Once you have enough content on a topic, consider repackaging those blog posts into a fresh new guide. For example, you may have written in the past about how to install photovoltaic panels, which ones to choose, how they work. Turn them into a “Complete Guide to Photovoltaic Panels,” for example, which you can then use in your email marketing.
Did you know that infographics get 12% more traffic and 200% more shares than posts without images? You can take advantage of this by turning valuable information from your blogs into compelling infographics for social media posts, website supplements, email newsletters, and more.
Main article image: photo by Carol Yepes / Moment / Getty Images
