How To Use An Old Blog To Generate New Traffic

There are times when an older blog is suddenly ‘rediscovered’ by your audience (and therefore Google). This is great news because Google rewards content which has proven to be of value, with increased rankings and the increased traffic that comes along with it. If your content is of exceptional value, you may become a featured snippet or link bait. The not-so-great news might be that it’s an older blog; unoptimized for SEO, content marketing, and most importantly, conversions.

Chances are this blog was originally written as ‘stand-alone’ and not at all evergreen (meaning the content is a little out of date). As it has no connection to your current MSP marketing or content plan, and it might not be following best practices such as inbound marketing strategies, you probably aren’t taking advantage of the traffic this blog post is generating.

As these older blogs are often islands unto themselves, once your audience finishes reading them, they have nothing to do but leave your site. This is something that we want to prevent as the longer you are able to keep visitors on your site, the more likely they are to be converted.

So, while it’s great your older blog has caught attention and is driving traffic to your site, you need to have something for them to do once they get there. You need to develop a plan to leverage its popularity into a lead generator for your MSP.

Five Steps To Help An Old Blog Generate New Leads

Audit and Update Your Content

While it seems counterintuitive to edit a successful blog, one thing to consider is that while your blog is suddenly popular, it is also older and some of its information may be out-of-date. The goal of your content should be to provide your audience with a great user experience. While the initial search may result in click-throughs, out-of-date content will cause them to bounce. A great user experience translates into visitors staying on your site and returning for more information.

Return visitors are more likely to convert into customers.

Broken links, out of date content, obsolete graphics, or a lack of next steps can reduce user experience, and in turn your authority with your audience and Google. Think about this from a customer’s viewpoint, as an MSP you’re supposed to be an expert in technology, yet you can’t even get your website to work correctly. Not a great impression. To ensure a better user experience, external links (links to other websites) that are broken should be repaired or better yet be replaced by more informative links. Evaluate your content and update it with current information.

Don’t be afraid to tweak your old content to emphasize services you wish to focus on and drive traffic to. After all, the purpose of the blog is to develop leads for your MSP, however, it has to be a natural transition and not have a bunch of unrelated keywords crammed in. This leads us to our next point:

Avoid Keyword Stuffing

While it’s tempting to stuff as many MSP-related keywords into the blog as possible, resist the temptation as you may end up killing the golden goose. The blog as it is generated leads, all it needs is to be freshened up, not jammed full of irrelevant keywords. Your audience will quickly leave if they find their once-informative blog has turned into an infomercial. Finally, Google has little tolerance these days for black hat SEO such as keyword spamming.

Add Internal Links

When it comes to gaining value from an old blog, internal links can give your audience more insight into the blog’s topic and expose them to services your MSP can offer their businesses. Internal links are links that link to content inside your website, and can increase engagement, as you drive visitors deeper into your site in search for more information.

However you need to care about your internal links and give your audience useful information when they follow a link. If your links don’t push the conversation forward and provide your audience with a great user experience or the information they are looking for, they will leave the site; defeating the purpose of adding internal links. Consider building related landing pages with offers that would specifically help the types of users coming to the blog post in question.

Add a Strong Call to Action

Once you have added your updated internal links, there are still some additional steps you can do to encourage your audience to reach out to you. A call-to-action can give your audience the ‘push’ to complete an action and generate the leads you are searching for. Here are some quick tips to help generate leads:

• Make it Easy for Them to Reach You. Make sure your blog has a “next step” for those who want to contact you. That could be a form, your contact information, or a link to a page with a compelling offer related to the topic of the blog post. Give the call-to-action a little ‘punch’; while “Contact us” is simple and direct, today’s customers expect to be courted. Your call-to-action should provide an answer to their pain points, such as, “Stop dealing with annoying IT issues today.”
• To Sweeten the Pot, Add a Deliverable. Today’s audience understands their contact information is valuable, a deliverable can help them pull the trigger. A deliverable can be anything: a free audit, a gift card, or even a tin of cookies. However, while it can be anything, it must be something of value, not to you, but to them. Whitepapers, case studies, cheat sheets, printable fliers, and other valuable resources can be a great incentive, provided they are related to the blog post that’s driving the traffic to you.

Collect and Analyze Data on Blog Performance

All marketing is data-driven, if you don’t know the who, why, or where, you can’t market effectively. Make no mistake, your blog is an essential marketing tool and for many MSPs, their MSP blog and their website are the only marketing they do (unfortunately many shun away from social media and make excuses not to use social media because they wrongly think it’s not effective).

Modern marketing tactics such as your MSP website, blogs and social media all generate data. When it comes to blogs, your data is key to gaining insights into what potential clients are interested in and focusing your marketing to address their needs. Below is a sample flow chart which shows how data can provide insights into how users navigate the site and what they find of interest.

Use your Google Analytics (under Behavior drop-down>Behavior Flow) to track how visitors navigate to and from the blog. Are they going to the homepage, to the about us page or the service pages? Are they following the internal links to more content, or despite the changes you have made to the blog, are they just leaving? If they are leaving, then you will need to increase the level of engagement. Some ways to increase engagement include:

• Using social media to communicate directly with your audience and discussing the topic of your blog in real-time.Take advantage of our Ultimate Social Media Rig.
• Utilize email to contact people who have already shown an interest in your services and letting them know your blog has been updated. Here are 6 steps effective email marketing.
• Feature your revised blog on your homepage, informing visitors about it.
• Despite what some people believe, direct mail isn’t dead.

While it can seem daunting at first, revising old blog content is an easy and effective method to take advantage of customer interest and drive new people to your website; particularly if it is ranking well. Even better, the majority of the work has already been done, all you have to do is refresh it. Updating content, adding internal links and writing follow up articles, all work together to increase interest and develop brand awareness. Moreover, by analyzing the data you will be better positioned to develop new marketing campaigns around the revised content.

MSP Marketing is the lifeblood of your business, because without leads your business can’t grow and thrive. We can help. We have a variety of marketing solutions, designed from the ground up for MSPs like you. Services such as our blog services, eNewsletter, Printed Newsletter, SEO and Pay-Per-Click management will help get your MSP noticed! Call today to schedule your complimentary appointment.