In today’s fast-paced world, it is imperative to ensure that your content has a good reach and is accessible to as many people as possible. However, creating new and original blog content can become a difficult task that takes time and resources.
Repurposing content means taking your existing material, re-optimizing and updating it for new uses, allowing you to reach new audiences, increase exposure, and ultimately achieve greater interest. This article will discuss how to repurpose content and offers tips and strategies to help you get the most out of your existing material.
Repurposing Content: What Does It Mean?
Repurposing or republishing content refers to taking existing content, such as articles, old blog posts, YouTube video content, and social media posts, and then republishing or using it in an entirely new and creative way to reach new audiences. Repurposing content saves you more mileage from your existing material, saves time, and improves your content’s reach. If carried out efficiently, your new content may even outperform its predecessor.
How to Choose Content for Republishing
When determining which content to select for repurposing, there are factors to consider to ensure you get it right. Here are some of the rudimentary elements you might want to consider:
Consider the age of the content you want to republish. Content published over a year ago might require updates and revisions before republishing.
Secondly, consider the quality of the content. If it was a well-written, well-recorded, well-created, and informative piece, it might still be relevant and worth republishing.
Finally, consider changes in your content strategy and the audience for your publication in the past year. Again, always remember to take the content’s target audience into account. Suppose it was popular with readers in the past and well-received. In that case, it may still be of interest to them. With efficient updating and optimization, repurposed content can catch the attention of new demographics.
How To Repurpose Content
Repurposing your content saves your team time, but on the other hand, you’re also republishing content you know your audience wants. If you want some of your older content to be republished, there are a few ways to do this.
The most complex way will be to recreate the entire content from scratch, which could take a long time, depending on how much old content you have planned for repurposing.
You could also integrate new information into your content and optimize some of your old material into new content that still has relevance in today’s markets.
If you can not do either, you can mention in your introduction paragraph that the content is outdated and refer your readers to your newer articles instead via links.
Here are a few tips to keep your content fresh for your readers.
- Determine how much content you need to change: You might not have to make any changes in many cases, but you want to check to see that the content is current. A quick Google search will help you determine your content’s freshness. Look for updated statistics or anything related to studies, as that information can change frequently.
- Get the Technical Stuff Right: On a technical level, the most important thing to get right when republishing your content is the URL. You want to ensure that any backlinks pointing to your content are intact after the update. If not, Google may drop your rankings. Because of this, it’s best to leave dates or numbers out of your URLs. Maintaining a URL that makes sense for updated content takes time if you have a date or title involving a number. Dates in a URL that don’t match the posts’ can be off-putting and result in lower click-through rates.
If your URL does include numbers and you need to republish your content on the new one, simply 301 redirect the old URL to the new one. Doing this will maintain the strength of the backlinks pointing to the old URL.
Avoid Republishing Posts with Dated URLs
When refreshing or repurposing your content, it’s important to remember that republishing posts with dated URLs is not recommended. Doing so creates duplicates of the same content and can result in search engines marking the content as duplicate, which can negatively impact your search engine rankings and credibility.
Additionally, having dates in URLs can make things more complicated for you when trying to update or revamp the content in the future, as the URL will remain unchanged even after the content has been updated.
If your content features dated URLs, it’s best to focus on updating and refreshing the existing content rather than republishing posts.
Six Easy Steps to Repurpose and Refresh Existing Content
Here are six easy steps to help you repurpose and refresh your existing content:
Review your existing content
Find your content and identify which pieces would be good candidates for repurposing and refreshing. Consider factors like how well the content has performed in the past, how relevant it is to your audience, and how easily new uses can adapt.
Determine your goals
Before you repurpose blog content, it’s crucial to determine your goals. You can set plans to increase exposure, drive traffic, build brand awareness, or generate leads. Knowing what you want to achieve will help guide your decisions on what content to repurpose and how to refresh it.
Choose a format
Decide on the format you want to use for your repurposed content. A format can comprise articles, blog posts, videos, podcasts, infographics or social media posts, and so on.
Revamp the Content
Revise your content to make it more current, appealing, and relevant. It may involve adding new information, altering the format, or incorporating new graphics or visuals.
Spread the Word
After refreshing your content, ensure that it reaches a broader audience by promoting it. Spread the word by sharing it on social media, emailing your subscribers, or publishing it on a different platform.
Assess the Outcome
Evaluate the success of your content promotion by analyzing the results. Taking the time to access the outcome will give you insight into what worked effectively and what didn’t and inform future content revamping and refreshing strategies.
Following these steps, you can effectively repurpose and refresh your existing content, increasing exposure and impact while saving time.
Misconceptions Around Republishing Content
There are many misconceptions about republishing content that can result in confusion and mistakes, and most of them are not true, while some hold a certain level of truth. Here are some of the most common misconceptions:
Republishing is the same as plagiarism
When you republish or repurpose your content, that is not plagiarism. When you use someone else’s work without proper attribution or reference, that is plagiarism. By repurposing your content, you’re giving it a fresh outlook and a chance to reach new audiences.
Republishing will hurt your search engine rankings
Getting penalized from republishing might be the case if you publish your content again on a new URL (content duplication) and delete the previous one. When republishing a piece of content, it’s best to keep the old URL since changing it would require Google to re-index your content.
Republishing content will help your search engine rankings if you follow best practices for avoiding duplicate content. Such methods include using canonical tags, no index tags, and proper redirects.
Republishing is a lazy approach.
Republishing your content should not be seen as a lazy approach. It is an innovative and time-saving way of maximizing the potential of your content. However, you must plan strategically, add updates to your content, and carry out promotions to succeed.
Republishing is only for old content.
Republishing new and older content can bring benefits, given that the content remains relevant and valuable to your target audience.
By recognizing the misunderstandings about republishing content, you can make informed choices on when and how to republish for maximum visibility and reach.
Can I risk duplicate content penalties from Google if I republish content?
Due to the way, Google treats duplicate content, this mistake frequently occurs. They filter duplicate content-containing pages out of their search results rather than penalize entire sites. It is simply a filter, not a punishment.
I’ll lose search traffic if I publish the same content on a different platform.
This one has some merit to it. Google may rank the pages from these sites instead of the pages on your site if you republish your blog posts on sites like Medium or LinkedIn. To counter this, you should do two things:
- You should always check that whatever content on LinkedIn, Medium, or any other platform with significant authority links to your site. It helps indicate to Google that it originated from your site.
- Postpone publishing your content again until after Google has indexed it on your website.
What Does Content Duplication Mean?
You create duplicate content when you copy and paste content from one page with its URL and publish it on an entirely different page with its URL. As a result, you will have two pages with identical content on two separate URLs.
What is the stance of Google regarding duplicate content?
Google has created algorithms to shield users from the adverse effects of duplicate content. These algorithms cluster the different versions into a single entity, display the “best” URL within the cluster, and combine other signals (like links from pages within the group to the one shown).
Why do Bloggers Republish Content So Frequently?
To summarize, bloggers republish their content to reach new audiences, drive traffic, update and refresh content, maintain a consistent posting schedule, and test and experiment with different formats.
Can I work on new content and Reference old material?
Yes, that’s a viable option. Starting over with a new draft of the content while referencing earlier material can be a way to create fresh and updated content while still leveraging the value of your previous work.
It also allows you to make necessary revisions and updates to keep your content relevant and up-to-date.
However, repurposing content has many benefits, such as increased time efficiency, exposure, improved search engine optimization, and increased engagement. These benefits make republishing a more attractive option for some bloggers.
Ultimately, your chosen approach will depend on the type of content you are working with. Remember that by carefully considering the benefits and drawbacks of starting from scratch and repurposing existing content, you can make an informed decision about the best approach for your needs.
