EP 060 - Power-Up Your Old Blog Posts With SEO
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Welcome to SEO Day Studio with your hosts, the Findability Queen, Denise Millet, and the entrepreneur whisperer, Kim White. This is a space to hear the questions that fellow entrepreneurs have about SEO and get them answered. So many discussions involving techy topics like SEO are loaded with jargon and unnecessary complexity, so much so that anyone outside the tech industry has difficulty getting to the real meaning inside the information.
Denise believes that every entrepreneur can benefit from search engines once they hear how they work in a clear and straightforward way. She is on a mission to help entrepreneurs get the content they spend hours creating included in search engines, so when their customers search online, they're findable because she believes if they can't find you, they can't do business with you.
So stay tuned. The fun starts now
Welcome back to the SEO Today podcast, where we help later in life entrepreneurs like us, who are learning to get found online without burning out. I'm Kim White, and I'm here with your SEO guide and findability queen herself, Denise Millet. Denise, I'm so glad you're here with me today.
I'm so glad to be here with you, Kim.
We are changing the format of the show a little, and we want to just make this little announcement for the first few episodes of this season. we're doing our best to group questions into themes, but I have to make sure everybody's not worried. I didn't get fired as the official mailbag keeper. I got promoted to the director of themes.
So doesn't that sound much more official, so?
Definitely, definitely. It's badge-worthy. It's badge-worthy.
Today we're talking about something a lot of our listeners already have, but aren't fully using: old blog posts. Denise, you have said many times that there's often quiet money hiding in existing content.
So before I start firing questions your way, can you set the stage? Why are old blog posts such a missed opportunity?
Totally. A lot of entrepreneurs have years of posts sitting on their site that they wrote from a place of, at the time, get something out, not make this findable. So they weren't thinking about search and findability.
They were just like, "I've got to get this content out." So those posts probably don't target clear keyword phrases. they're not internally linked to other pages or your content or your offers. They haven't been updated since the day you hit published, right? But search engines, are always looking for relevant content, up-to-date, helpful content.
And when you go back and tune up those old posts with the SEO in your mind, you can often get more traffic faster than starting from zero. So this episode is all about using what you already have and giving it more power.
Hmm. That's very sexy, Denise. Let's start with the obvious first question, and remember to make Tuesdays your SEO day, y'all.
We drop this podcast on Tuesdays. Don't forget to follow the show so that you can i- stay in the know about SEOs, so that you can work with Denise on Tuesdays to get it done and not be overwhelmed. So here's the question: How do I decide which older blog posts are worth updating for better SEO instead of starting from scratch?
Great place to start a question, so because I really don't want you thinking you have to update everything, right? Here's a simple way to choose. First, you look at page views, even if it's small. You open your Google Search Console, and you look at your most viewed pages that are posts, right? And over the last three to six months, any post getting some traffic is better than one that's no one's seen.
So work on those. And then you look at relevance. Does this topic still match what I'm known for or what I'm selling now? If it's really old, you have to make sure it's a good candidate for what you're doing now. You want to align the two. If not, it might not be worth your time if you just want to do it fast.
if you find something that's not talking about your current offer, but it's something you used to offer, you bring it up to speed. look at- Posts that are almost there. sometimes a post is close. It answers a good question, it has a good theme, it's helpful, but it's missing keywords, it's missing subheadings, it's missing, tying into a call to action.
That's a way to update things without rewriting, right? That's just beefing up and changing the formatting. So that's ... Those are easy to do. And then what I want you to do as you go through all that analysis, but start with three to five posts. Put them on a list. That's all you're looking at right now.
Don't look at the whole thing, because you'll never do it. And just pick one to two posts at a time and get those, ready to go, and align them with your current offers. And that way you're putting your energy into content that's most likely to move the needle now.
I love that. So we're looking for posts that are already trying to work for us, and we're going to help them do their job better.
Exactly. So you're upgrading your almost working content.
I love it. Well, question number two, Denise, is now that we know what to pick, here's the heart of it, what three to five changes give me the biggest SEO boost when I revisit an old post without rewriting the whole thing? You know how I feel about not wanting to write.
No. And, and you don't want to start from scratch, because what's the point, right? you don't have to redo everything. So you focus on a few high impact things. First, you clarify the main question. What is the single question this post is answering? Update the title and first paragraph to clearly relate to that question and to answer.
So obviously your keywords are the second thing you would do. You want to tighten your keywords that associate with that question that they're asking. So when they're actually typing, what are the words are they using to refer to that?
they're going to type in how to what? Tips for what? Beginner's guide to what? Right? So you want to start sp- something with specifics that they're actually going to type, for example, right? Okay, subheadings. People forget about this, but I'm a skimmer, you're a skimmer, right? So I pick-- I bring up a piece of content, I look at the headings to see if it's...
It sounds crazy. I don't do it consciously, but you do. You skim it to see if it's going to be something you want to read. Is it too short, too long, and what's it about? That tells me everything before I invest the time to read it. So if you add subheadings that relate to your keywords and your headline and they all align and they're logical, then people are going to see that logic, and then it-- decide if they're going to in- invest the time.
the fourth thing is you add links to other things on that topic, not just link for the link's sake. But clearly, if you picked a, if there's an idea that's your core idea that you're working on in your business, you're going to have more than one piece, right? And if they're all related, there's no saying you can't have them connect to each other.
So you do the one how-to, and you want to find out more about tips for this thing too, click here. So internal links are very important. They tell search engines what's connected, and they also tell your people where to go next And fifth, this is hard because, you don't think of blog posts as being selling things, but we all have to have some reason to write a blog post.
It's an opportunity to give someone a way to connect with you or take action with you. So you don't want to miss that opportunity, but you want that opportunity to be related to what you're talking about. So for me, it's SEO, so it's, take my quiz. But if you're talking about blogging, it would be, here's my blogging workshop.
Maybe that works for you. If I'm just talking about SEO, I might not want to offer the same thing all the time. I might want to say, "If you want more about this, sign up to my email list and we'll talk about it every week." You know? So make sure it relates. those are the, the five things that I would do
Great
It's a lot, I know.
So it's less tear down the house- ... and more new front door, better lighting, and clear signs inside. Right.
You're renovating, not rebuilding.
I love that analogy. All right, question number three. Let's dig into internal links, Denise, because I know that trips people up. How do internal links actually help my SEO, and where should I add them inside existing posts?
Gotcha. Okay. So I started a little bit the last question, so let me finish. Internal links are are just simply links from one page to another on your site. you have your menu, but your menu is like your main topics, right? So they're your main actions, your ... who you're about, what your business is about, what your services are about, how to contact you, right?
But if you write a blog post, it's about a question that someone's asking, and that's a topic. So for me, it would be blogs, or it would be SEO, or it would be podcasting. So let's say I'm talking about SEO. Well, I'm writing a lot about SEO in my blog posts and in all different ways to answer a lot of questions.
Mm-hmm. But they're all related to SEO. Mm-hmm. So I could have a page in each blog post, I could say, "Here's, here's something to find out more about this part of SEO." I could have a link at the bottom. I could have a link in the middle of the text that says, "This also talks about this in this article," while I'm talking about it.
Or you could have a page that says, "Here's where you... Let's get started with SEO," and just have links to all the things you've done with, about SEO, so it's a, like a roadmap or a get started page for SEO on your site. what that does for humans is it helps readers go deeper on the topic that they already know they want to know something about, or they've found something about, and it helps them find out more if they want to, which is great.
So you don't feel like you have to bombard them over their head all the time with brand-new stuff, but you just kind of say, "Hey, here are some more things." And I've done that so many times, going down that rabbit hole. and it tells SEO that you are more of an authority because you have a lot of content.
So where you add them in old posts is anywhere that naturally mentions a concept you have more content about. it could be at the end, it could be in the middle, and it could be on a summary page. And you can, if you reference an offer, include that there as a link to the offer or to the sales page for the offer.
So that's actually considered a link, and it doesn't have to be a button or a call to action, buy my thing at the bottom. But it could be simple. Like for me, it would say- If you want to find out how to use SEO more for your blog, check out my SEO for Blogging workshop, and that would take you to a page that has way more detail about that.
So think of it as creating a guided path through your content instead of leaving people at a dead end. We don't like dead ends, right Kim?
No, we do not. And we'll link, Denise's SEO for Bloggers workshop in the show notes. I'm, I am, volun- voluntolding Denise to do that. So- Hey ... so you're- Hey. So you're not forcing links in, you're connecting dots that are already there-
which helps everyone visiting, I will say.
Right. Exactly. it's like you say, "I've written about that before," and that's probably a good place for a link.
I love it. Well, let's head over for a word from our sponsor for today.
This episode is brought to you by the Findability Queen, Denise Millet. Visit her YouTube channel, youtube.com/@findabilityqueen, for her collection of short videos answering questions about findability and SEO for entrepreneurs every day
Well, welcome back.
We're at question number four, and some people worry about sounding weird here. So I'm going to speak for all of us weird people. We, we don't want to sound weird. What is the easiest way to add keywords to old posts without making it sound robotic or stuffed with keywords, just repeating it over and over?
Okay. This is, this is a big one, especially if you're sensitive to tone in your voice, right? So here's a general approach. First, you pick one main keyword phrase, something your audience would actually search for, like, okay, for me, SEO tips for artists, how to write blog posts faster. Then place it in key spots naturally in the title or close to it, in the first one or two sentences, and then in a subheading if it fits, and one or two more times in the body where it reads smoothly.
But you have to use... The third thing is use variations of it instead of repeating that same SEO tips for artists. Use synonyms. Use your AI to help you get you wa- different ways to say this. And, search engine strategy for creatives is the same as SEO for artists kind of, right? So you want to rephrase it in those places because Search is smart enough to know that they're all connected, they all mean the same thing.
It doesn't have to look for exact matches anymore. it's smart enough to know what synonyms are and what words connect. So I would use those variations, And then I'll go back to the last thing, before is read it out loud. If it sounds like you're forcing the phrase, if you trip up on a word, swap it for another natural, more natural word or take it out.
The goal is human first, search friendly. And remember that Google is much better now at understanding things that connect, so you don't need to hammer a keyword and stuff it in there because clarity and natural language win over repetition.
So we're adding clarity more than we're adding tricks.
Exactly.
Think of it as answering the searcher's question in the words they'd use.
Love that, Denise. Well, question number five, and this comes up a lot when we talk about refreshing older posts. If I change the title or URL of an old blog post, is that risky for SEO, and how should I handle it?
Great question because this is where people can accidentally break things.
Hmm.
changing the title is usually low risk and often very helpful. You can safely update an old, vague title to something more clear, more keyword focused without hurting SEO as long as the topic of the post stays the same and the content matches what the new title is. Don't just put a new title in there and not change
If you change the whole theme of it or the whole idea, you can't mismatch the two. It won't do you any good, right? But then I'm going to say we're going to go to change the URL, and what do I tell people, Kim? Do not change URLs.
It's dangerous.
Right. I mean, there's some theories, technically, and nobody who's in their beginner stage or learning or who's pivoting cares about this.
You would have to do a technical thing called redirecting the old one to the new one, and you don't want to deal with that. So you want to not change a URL. If it comes down to where you think the URL is so off, off key for what the rest is, you should probably create a new post before you change the URL So that's what I'm going to say about that.
Feel free to improve titles as much as you want, make sure they match your content, but caution with URLs. Do not change them because it'll leave a link in there that won't work in search, and someone clicks on that link and goes to your error page. Well, what do you do when you get an error page, Kim?
I leave.
I don't go to the homepage and look for more. No. I'm like, "Oh, well, you let me down. I clicked on that link. I wanted to see this content. Back button." Go back to search results and find somebody else. So you don't want that to happen, so, um, yeah.
So titles are a fairly safe place to get clearer, but URLs are more of a measure twice, cut once situation, especially if that post is already getting visits.
Exactly. Don't be afraid to improve clarity, just be intentional.
Okay, Denise, for the listener who's thinking, "I've got these old blog posts. I'm trying some of these ideas, but I'm a beginning entrepreneur, and I honestly don't know what I'm supposed to understand. If I want to do SEO myself," what's a good next step for them?
Well, that's exactly who I had in mind when I created my SEO quiz. It's designed for beginner entrepreneurs who want to understand what they actually need to know about SEO, see which parts of SEO they can confidently do on their own, and spot where they're missing simple, beginner-friendly wins, right?
The quiz walks you through a, a handful of short, seven short questions, and then gives you a clear result, like here's what you already know and doing, here's what you're leaving opportunities on the table if you were to find out, and here's what to focus on first if you want to manage SEO yourself without getting overwhelmed.
And I don't believe in using jargon. I don't lecture. It's a straightforward view of what you need to know at this stage.
So if you're a beginning entrepreneur and you want to understand what you really need to know to do SEO on your own, go take Denise's SEO quiz. I've taken it and loved it because it gave me much clarity of where I was.
You can find it in the show notes, and we'll also, be talking about it over the different episodes, so just be sure that you take it so that when you come on Tuesdays- ... when this show drops, you will be ready for what Denise is actually sharing on the
podcast. Yeah. Take a few minutes, answer honestly, and let your results guide your next steps.
Um, I'll show you which SEO pieces matter most for you right now, and which ones you can stop worrying about for the moment.
Well, Denise, thanks for showing us how to turn old blog posts into little SEO powerhouses. And thank you, sweet listener, for listening to the SEO Day podcast. If this episode helped you, share it with another beginning entrepreneur who's been blogging for years but hasn't tapped into SEO yet.
And we'll see you on the next episode.
Bye for now
Thank you for joining Denise and Kim in the SEO Day studio for today's discussion. If you would like one of your SEO questions answered in a future episode, head on over to denisemillet.com/questions to let us know. The link is also in the show notes. We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode of the SEO Day podcast.
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