As bloggers, we struggle for residual income. We want to do the job once and reap the rewards for years to come. You put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into creating that evergreen, massive, monetized post. But once the congestion clears, so does the income.
If you have a few posts on the shelf, don’t we all, here’s how to brush them up and polish them for a new audience. Here are several ways to get more traffic to your monetized posts
1. SEO
I will be the first to admit that search engine optimization can often be an afterthought. I get so excited about writing and publishing that I don’t do much keyword research or optimization. But it is correct! It’s never too late to revisit a post and make it searchable.
Change the title. Include keywords in the content. Make sure your images include ALT descriptions. If you use a plugin like Yoast, make sure you fill out the meta information.
You can also change the URL if you want, but only if you know how to redirect so you don’t lose any traffic if someone arrives via the old URL.
2. Share it on social
We often do this when we want to get more traffic to a post. If a post is well monetized and still relevant, create a few new images and share it again on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter. You may want to create a few different images for pinning to see which one performs better.
3. Send an email
There will always be some churn with email lists. New people sign up every day and other people unsubscribe. There is a 99.9% chance that 99.9% of your subscribers haven’t read every post on your blog. But there are probably many that should!
My newsletter is built around posts published long ago but still useful. This is a great way to answer questions you know these new subscribers have while still driving traffic to old-but-good posts.
4. Run an ad
You can buy an ad almost anywhere these days; Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Google, other blogs. I don’t recommend the spaghetti-at-the-wall strategy when it comes to advertising. You need to make sure that you are getting a good return on your investment or it is just a waste of time and money. Take the time to learn about advertising best practices for your preferred platform or hire it. If you don’t know what you are doing you can waste a lot of money in a very short time.
5. Run a giveaway
Who says you can only give gifts on new posts? If you have a great post that could use a little revitalization, consider republishing it on your homepage with a short-term giveaway. Most giveaway software offers additional entries for social sharing so this can be a great way to get extra eyes on an evergreen post. You can sponsor the giveaway yourself or contact an advertiser you mentioned in the post to see how well the post is converting now and if you believe you can boost those numbers with additional traffic in the form of a giveaway. They may be willing to contribute a prize or special discount.
6. Link it often
When we link from within a post to another post on our site it is called internal linking. Internal links have many advantages. They can drive traffic to related posts. They can keep visitors on your blog longer so you can earn their trust and get them to take action whether it’s making a purchase or signing up for your email list. Internal links can also increase search rankings because you signal to search engines which posts are most important on your site and what they are.
I keep a big list of my important posts and often link to other posts, resource pages and roundups, “start here” pages, archive pages, and more.
7. Re-purpose it
The more I implemented video into my blog marketing plan, the more it became clear that the people watching my videos were not my regular blog readers. We all like to consume content in different ways. I, for one, prefer reading to watching or listening. I don’t have the time or the patience. Just give me something to skim over.
but Statistics Tell me my choices may not necessarily be ideal. And, video is outperforming text and links on social media:
- Videos receive an average of 135% more organic traffic on Facebook than photos
- 4 times more people would rather watch a video about a product than read about it
- Companies that use video in their marketing grow an average of 49% faster per year
- Companies that use video in their marketing enjoy 27% higher CTRs and 34% higher web conversion rates than those that don’t.
- Online videos will account for more than 80% of all consumer internet traffic by 2020
more terrifying Statistics:
- 45% of people watch more than an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos a week.
- One-third of online activity is spent watching video.
- Social videos generate 1200% more shares than text and images combined.
- Video increases organic traffic from SERPs by 157%
- Adding a video to a marketing email can increase click-through rates by 200-300%.
Crazy thing, right? But instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, relive some of your greatest post hits on video In your video description, link back to your blog post. Embed the video in your blog post for those who prefer to watch rather than read. Upload your videos to both YouTube and Facebook. It’s win-win. Get the most mileage out of everything you make.
A blog post is never “one and done”. To generate the income we all desire, you need to incorporate a little upkeep and maintenance into your daily routine. See how I use Airtable to manage my content here and download my free resource for auditing a blog here.
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