Keep your content current

If you expect your blog to be around for a while and you want readers that visit in 5 years time to find your content is still relevant to them, you need to make sure the content is timeless.  Writing content that won’t go out of date will ensure that  it still holds true whether it’s read in 3 months, 3 years or 30 years.

Content of this type is a serious benefit to both you and your future readers.  You won’t have to make sure that these posts are still current and new visitors can browse your archives without worrying that what they will find there no longer applies to what they‘re trying to accomplish today.

This not only means you don’t have to keep updating your content every 6 months which will save you time, it also helps with other people who you may allow to use your content on their websites. They are sure not going to update your content for you.

I learned this lesson the hard way.  There are still documents floating around odd places on the Internet that I wrote several years ago that I’m more than a little embarrassed to have my name on. They were cutting edge at the time, but now they’re so outdated that the articles themselves could be considered comedy.

Some topics will always be timeless. If you can find these topics you’ll have a solid foundation to build on, with a list of articles that you can use and re-use over time. Find timeless topics and write about them.

Update Outdated Content

Obviously not all content can be timeless.  If you blog about topics that change quickly you’re going to have content that will quickly become stale or outdated over time. Rather than let this older content make your blog seem stale, with a bit of upkeep you can keep this content current enough to keep bringing in new visitors for years to come.

The fist step in this process is to identify older content that’s still bringing visitors to your site.  This is a fairly painless process if you are using a decent statistics package such as Google Analytics or StatCounter.  If you aren’t using a statistics package, you’ll need to sign up for one that allows you to see which pages are visited most often, then let it run for a few weeks so that you can get a better feel for which of your older pages are still drawing in traffic.

Once you’ve determined which older posts are still drawing traffic, go take a look at these posts.  When possible, freshen them up so that they are still relevant today.  If that isn’t possible, write a newer post that is relevant and either replace the older post with that content or send your readers to the new post instead.  Your readers will still pop in to read what you have to say, and they’ll have a better experience with the updated information.

Peace. I’m out.

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