How Recycling Content Can Boost Your Traffic

If you have been blogging for any period of time you have built a large collection of articles, many of which are timeless and relevant pieces that many of today’s readers have yet to place an eyeball upon.

Some of your best stuff is mixed in back in those double-digit pages of times gone by and you should reach back there, dust off a few and recycle them.

Now this has nothing to do with keeping fresh content on your blog’s front page but rather, providing an opportunity for others to see and enjoy some of your past work.

Much like a library, there are some great books on the shelf but we don’t stop reading them because they were written some time ago.

Most blog posts see the light of day for a short period of time before fresh content cycles them farther and farther back into your blog.

A win-win situation is created by sharing some past posts with others and gaining some traffic in the process.

How this can boost your traffic

• Twitter – For some time now I have Tweeted out links to older posts a couple of times weekly. Often times this results in new comments on old posts and the eventual landing of the visitor on the home page where they will read the current post. Some of these readers have become regulars.
• Facebook
• FriendFeed
• BlogEngage

I won’t list every site here but the general idea is to recycle an old post once a week or so in various outpost that lead back to your blog.

Be judicious about it so people don’t get the impression that you have nothing fresh and new and be very selective about the older post that you put out there. These will have to be relevant and valuable as if they were written today.

This is a good strategy and I can tell you that it really works to increase your traffic. Test a post or two on a seldom visited outpost and see the results for yourself.

The amount of traffic received will depend on many factors, not the least of which will be the quality of the post and the people who see it at the time the link is dropped. This is why catchy titles are so important.

Will the floodgates open? Of course not, but every trickle of traffic adds to the cumulative effect of all inbound visitors.

So give it a shot, dust off some of those great posts that had such a short shelf life. This is another tool that is only sitting in the archive dormant. Breathe a little new life into them.

Recycle and keep blogging!