Maintaining a blog (or any website for that matter) in the ever-changing digital space often feels like a Sisyphean task at times. As a blogger/writer, you pour your heart and soul into creating material, but as time passes, those once-gleaming gems begin to fade. Even those old posts with content that at the time I thought was absolutely amazing.
As part of the commitment which I talked about last Monday, it also hit me that it was also time to begin on a journey to resurrect my previous blog postings, all those jewels from before 2023 and rewrite, research and elaborate my thoughts on those previous posts and to republish them. Time has passed and things have changed.
In this personal article, I’ll walk you through my process of energizing and upgrading my aging material, giving insights, examples, and the wonderful impact it’s had on the performance of my site.
The Importance of Updating Old Posts
The digital world runs on the Darwinian principle of adapt or perish. My blog was/is no different. Outdated information, broken links, and the ever-changing SEO landscape diminish the value of my earlier posts invisibly. Therefore I found that it was time to take action, and considering they were just posts, one would wonder why things are broken? Well, for a variety of reasons. The various codes I used across the website, the tools and whatnot that I have implemented over the years have either changed or become outdated. I’ve changed the core of the website a few times, logically first backing up all the material, and therefore you will not find anything past the most recent period. With the launch of my renegade program, I’ve also decided to eliminate most of the content and kind of give the site a “clean slate” as of Monday May 1st. Bear with me. I have lots of ideas and things I want to execute here to help you with the things I have learned over the years regarding mindset.
Nonetheless, before I could start updating anything leading up to last week, I needed to figure out which entries were worthwhile. I began by analyzing the success of each blog post using analytics tools that I still had available (data sets) and whatever material was left for me in my digital archives. I then considered prioritizing posts with high traffic at the time (or other data points such as comments), but contained old information. After sifting through posts from 2009 and forward (albeit blogging even earlier then that), it was during this journey, one of my most crucial realizations came to be in that I realized that several of my earlier blog entries had timeless principles. They merely needed a facelift to keep up with the times. That is something I have been working on the past weeks and will continue to work on and publish in the coming weeks and months.
Sifting through and reading past articles, I looked through each blog post carefully, took down notes, began researching and adding, taking a thing or two away and then adding pertinent internal connections to my newer content (that I already have set in the back end) all while browsing/researching other sites for useful external back links. (If you run a website you know that the glue that keeps the web together is internal and external linkages – sort of.)
When I first began blogging back in 2005 under a very long named domain at the time, which back then, cost $70 to register and much much more to host (not on geocities), I began building out what technically could be called the first version of this website. I created a following at the time (end of ’05) of roughly 20k readers on a monthly basis, which was incredible. Engaging with my audience was a critical component of my journey. I had a comments section, inviting people to contribute their ideas and experiences. It turned my posts into lively debate points. I then began venturing off into various side projects and working with companies on digital aspects of their business before we had Facebook and all these other fancy tools.
However, now as of my new commitment to this site, to myself, my reading, my knowledge, my cultivating that knowledge and disseminating that know how, especially in regard to mindset I found that updating all the old and republishing was the way forward. Especially, now having launched the Renegade Program.
So, that being said, two of the articles from last week are actually “refurbished” ones. For fun, I did not list out which, but it shows that with a little effort, and determination, I can take up topics for nearly a decade ago, do my homework and share with you updated thoughts on the subject. Now comes the fun part of the journey as no journey is complete without landmarks. I look forward to measuring the success of my reinvigorated posts using a variety of metrics, including (hopefully) greater traffic, higher ranks, and increased engagement.
Conclusion
It has been a long couple of weeks in between all my other endeavors and life in general, however updating all of my previous blog postings prior to 2023 has been an amazing challenge. I am not 100% complete, far from it. But I enjoy working on the open topics I have listed and ultimately to me it demonstrates the enduring value of high-quality information as well as the significance of adaptation in the digital environment.
So, if you write, blog or have a website, and if you’ve been ignoring your older content, try taking a similar path. You’ll be astounded at the untapped potential, and your viewers will appreciate the updated, relevant, and engaging content, just like I hope that you too will enjoy the updated posts (whether you note it or not, or I note it in the post) over the coming weeks.
That being said, stay dedicated, motivated, committed. All day, everyday!
Make it happen!
