Hubspot just reported that it doubled its number of monthly leads generated by old blog posts.
They also just increased their monthly organic search views of old posts by an average 106%.
So how’d they do it?
Advertising?
Magic?
Nope.
In her article, The Blogging Tactic No One is Talking About: Optimizing the Past, published today on Hubspot, Pamela Vaughan explains how the growth happened, and it’s not a tactic every has at the top of their list.
It’s historical optimization.
Historical optimization is the process of looking at old blogs, whether that means a month old or a year old, and updating that content to be relevant, fresh and up-to-date.
The HubSpot blogging team began optimizing old posts when they got a report on their blogs stats which showed that 70% of their monthly blog views came from posts that were at least one month old. 92% of their blog leads also came from posts that were at least one month old.
Surprised?
Don’t be: Vaughan points out that the report made it quite clear that revisiting posts can keeping content up-to-date is invaluable for businesses. The chart below shows what their report found in terms of their distribution of monthly leads versus the distribution of posts.
Hubspot.com
And with stats like those, you’d have to be crazy not to re-visit and revamp your old posts.
“Getting recurring, lasting value from old content is one of the main benefits of blogging. And the traffic sources for our top lead-generating posts supported it — these were all posts that were generating a lot of traffic from organic search month after month after month,” writes Vaughan.
“While we knew we couldn’t just stop creating new content (after all, “new” eventually becomes “old”), it was clear we needed to make a change in our blogging strategy. ”
By adding historical optimization to your blogging strategy you’re greatly increasing your chances to getting leads from those old posts. It’s simple: for example, a keyword that’s popular now might not be so hot in a year. If your blog post is still using the outdated keyword, the chances of it showing up in a search engine 365 days from now are not so great. Keeping your content fresh is vital.
So, why isn’t anyone talking about it?
Although we haven’t heard much about historical optimization just yet, we imagine it’s only a matter of time before historical optimization is a tool in everyone’s arsenal.
Tell us in the comments below: is it part of your blogging plan?