A How-to on Republishing Your Law Firm’s Blog Posts
If you read our last blog post on republishing blog posts, you know there are several benefits to your firm in doing so. Refreshing blog posts help to refresh your content catalog, improve search rankings (or keep them intact), and fill up your editorial calendar during busy times. There are definitely some details that can help make this process smoother and more successful, though. Keep reading for our best practices on republishing your law firm’s blog posts and marketing content.
We mentioned this in the last post, but it’s worth bringing up again. If your CMS mentions a date – or even a year – you likely want to republish altogether instead of just updating the original post. Give articles a new url to reflect a more current and relevant date.
How do I pick the posts that are worth publishing again?
If you’re not conducting content audits regularly, now is a good time to start. Doing so is incredibly useful for finding out which posts make sense to republish. We look across a few different metrics, such as traffic, social engagement, and conversion to email lists. You’ll want to look back a full year. Google Analytics is a useful tool for pulling this data.
A smart routine to get into is pulling this information at least once a year, and then dropping the information on posts worth republishing into a spreadsheet or other tracking system. Make note of:
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The title or headline from the original post
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Author – and you may want to track whether or not you have permission to publish again
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Publication date – we like to wait a year before republishing anything, but the time between posts will also depend on your posting frequency and other factors
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New Keywords – based on your latest research, there may be new keywords you want to add into the content
What’s the deal with redirects?
You’ll need to decide if you want to redirect the original url to a new url, or simply post a new version without redirecting. We suggest redirecting the original link to a new one if that post is no longer getting traffic (or never got much), or if you find that the information within it is not really accurate anymore.
If the original post is doing decent with traffic, you’ll want to leave it alone and create a new post with a new url. You should add a note at the top of the original page, directing to new information at the recently created url.
You also might be wondering about duplicate content, which is a real concern when it comes to SEO and penalties. Generally, if your site is content-rich, you can create a new post with similar content to an old one, without getting dinged. If you don’t post often, you’ll want to make a point to revise more of the content to avoid duplicate content issues.
Takeaway
The bottom line is that republishing content is a great way to quickly and easily capitalize on previously created blog posts. Do you have a content republishing strategy? If not, we’d love to help you develop one – just contact us for help!
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