Blog post Lifespan:5 Mind-blowing ways to make your blog post last forever

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Blog post lifespan
 
You work hard to create interesting and unique content your audience loves.
 
You promoted the content using different distribution channels
 
The content generated good traffic
 
You forgot it there and moved on to create more content
 
How many of us can relate to this scenario?
 
It is common to see marketers and blog owners create content after content without thinking about its lifespan.
 
No wonder there are millions of blog posts created daily on the internet.
 
blog life span
 
The sheer amount of content published daily makes content to quickly disappear into oblivion.
 
And you know what:
 
Like every product, your blog post has its own lifespan. It expires at a point.
 
A research carried out by IZEA revealed that the lifetime value of a blog post is 2 years. The study further revealed that blog posts lifespan is in three stages. i.e.
 
blog life span
 
a. The shout phase – Day 1 to 10. It gets 50% of its lifespan traffic
b. The echo phase – Day 10-30. It gets 72% of its lifespan traffic
c. The reverberate phase – Day 30-700. It gets 99% by day 700.
 
This means that when you create a blog post, it generates 50% of its traffic from day 1 to 10. Then from day 10 to 30, it generates 22% more traffic, then by day 700, it would have generated 28% of its traffic, making it 99% of its traffic in its lifetime.
 
The study generated a formula for calculating the lifetime of a blog post. It is 1.4x (x is the first month page views).
 
This is why content marketers and bloggers should take advantage of blogging. It has a longer span than compared to any other kind of marketing.
 
Now that you know there is a blog post lifespan, how do you extend it? What can you do to make it generate traffic forever?
 
The answer is by repurposing your content in different formats.
 
 
In this post, you are going to learn how to repurpose your content so it lasts forever. This is one of the most popular strategies to extend your blog post lifespan.
The first step is to know the topmost performing blog post on your blog.
 
You can do this by using Google analytics.
 
i.  Log into your Google Analytics account
ii. Click on behavior tab, then click on site content and all pages
blog life span
iii. Select the time frame for the analysis
iv. Scroll down to see the list of your post and the number of page views arranged accordingly.
 
The posts with the highest number of views are your top performing posts. These are the post you are going to be extending their lifespan.
 

Blog post lifespan: How to extend the lifespan of your top performing blog posts:

1.     Update and re-promote or re-launch

 Updating and re-promoting add value to your content. It also helps to change its ranking position in search engines. Most importantly, it expands your blog post lifespan.
 
Buzzsumo conducted a research on Brian Dean’s content strategy – “Updating and re-promoting”. They searched his blog and found that one of his top posts is a 2017 update of his 2014 SEO keyword research guide. See it below:
 Blog life span
 
They asked him about this strategy and this was what he said:
 
“I usually update a post if it needs an update in some way and/or it’s not ranking as well as I’d like.
For example, let’s say I’m looking at publishing a post in May. If all my content is up-to-date and ranking where I think it should be, I’ll write something new.
 If not, I’ll update and relaunch an old post.”
 
How does he do it?
 
He adds more content in form of Videos, Case Studies, statistics etc.
 
Does the post generate more traffic?
 
You bet it does!
 
He updated and re-promoted one of his blog posts “White hat SEO case study: 348% more organic traffic in 7 days”
 
He added more images and some new information. He changed the title to “white hat SEO case study: How to get a #1 ranking”.
 
He re-promoted the post to his email list and social media networks.
 
The post ended up generating an 113.7% increase in organic traffic.
 
How can you steal this strategy?
 
Since you know your top performing blog posts, use the research (packaged in the infographic) below to create perfect blog posts that add value to your audience:


Via: blogpros.com

a.    Increase your blog post word count

 The average count of words per article according to the research above is 1149. So, if your article is 300- 700 words, increase it to over 1,000 words.
 
Long form contents rank high in Google and improve conversion. Buzzsumo and Okdock analyzed 100 million articles to know why content go viral. They discovered that long form content gets more shares than short form content.
 
Blog post life span
 
Therefore, adding more content to your blog post will increase its shares.
 

b.   Add quotes, images, and videos

 From the infographic above, the top ranking articles analyzed have quotes, videos, and at least 3.2 images.
 
If your top performing content does not have these elements, it is time to add them. You can get free quotes online by searching for them on Google. There are lots of free images on pexels.com, Flickr, etc. You can also get quality videos to embed on YouTube for free.
 

c.   Add outbound and inbound links

 Add links to relevant authority content in your niche to your blog posts. You can search for top articles on your topic on Google and add the link to your content. You can also link to other articles that are relevant to your topic on your blog. According to the research, each article had an average of 9.96 links.
 

d.   The length of the title of your blog post

 The average title of a blog post should be 50-60. According to MOZ, search engines such as Google are able to display the first 50-60 characters of your title tag.
 
If it is longer than that it will be cut off. You can use Moz’s title tag preview tool to check out your title length. If the blog post you want to update has a title that is too long, you can quickly change it for better SEO performance.
 

e.     Change the title of your blog post

 In the research, they discovered that titles that answer questions, have numbered list, how-to, tutorial or guide rank well.
 
This is corroborated with Buzzsumo’s research as seen below.
 
 Blog post life span
 
It shows the average shares per content. List posts are the most shared, followed by why post, what post, how to article etc.
 
Now that you have a perfect blog post, it is time to start repurposing:
 

2.       Create a content library

 A content library is a collection of content assets placed in a place where your audience can access it. It contains E-books, Videos, webinars, audio seminars, podcast episodes, white papers, infographics, tutorials etc. It is a great way to extend your blog post lifespan.
 
The good news is:
 
You don’t need new content for your content library. You can combine your articles together to create e-books, podcast, whitepapers etc.
 
The rule is:
 
Your content library must have high-value content to be able to attract and keep your audience.
 
A content library will help you to build a relationship with your visitors. This will help you to convert them to leads.
 
You don’t have to build your content library at once. You can start building it little by little. Promise your visitors to always add new content to keep them coming back for more.
 
Once you set up your library, you can start inviting your audience on your email list.
 
You can either make it free or accessible through email. Visitors may have to drop their email to assess the content library.
 
This is the concept used by Copyblogger. For you to assess their content library, you will have to sign up for free. See the page Below:
 
blog post lifespan
 
Their content library contains lots of resources in different formats. It includes webinars, e-books, email courses, white papers etc.
 
Below is a sample of free access library of Unbounce.
 
Blog post life span
 
The library contains podcast, Infographics, Toolkits, Whitepapers, Videos, etc. 
 

3.      Create E-books

Creating e-books out of your blog posts is another great way to extend your blog post lifespan.It is easier if you have written series of posts on a popular topic or you have categories for different topics on your blog.  You can easily create e-books from the categories.

You know what?

You don’t need lots of content to create an e-book. 10,000 words of content will make a great e-book. That should amount to about 10 blog posts. If you don’t have the time to do it, you can easily outsource it.

You can sell or give them away for free to build your email lists.

A good example of this is the “31 days to build a better blog” created by Darren Rowse of Problogger.net. He created the e-book from a series of blog posts he wrote in thirty-one days.
blog post life span
 
Each post consists of a topic a blogger can use to grow his or her following. The blog post drew lots of traffic to the website and he decided to put it together and sell as an e-book
 
blog post life span
 
You can also use the post as a lead generation tool just like Pat Flynn of smartpassiveincome.com did. He created a series of posts on “How to write an ebook”. It provides answers to readers’ questions about e-book writing. It was a ten-post series.
 
He combined the post together to create a lead magnet that he could give away to collect email addresses from visitors.
 
blog post life span
 
The e-book has been downloaded more than 150,000 times since 2010 and it is still generating more emails for him.
 

4.     Create a content upgrade and add it to your old blog posts

The fourth way you can extend your blog post lifespan is by creating a content upgrade.  A content upgrade is a free resource you offer to your readers in exchange for their email address.

You don’t need new content for your upgrade; you can create it from your old blog post.

Brian Dean of Backlinko used a content upgrade on his popular post and boosts his conversion by 785%.

Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income also boosts his email opt-ins by 500% per blog post with content upgrades.

You can create different content upgrades from different blog posts.

For example, if you have an old How-to guide that has generated massive traffic in time past, you can decide to create a content upgrade inform of a downloadable PDF version of the post.

Kim Roach of Buzzblogger did this for her post titled “Top 60 WordPress plugins of 2014“.  The content upgrade was the PDF version of the entire post.

blog post lifespan

You can create checklists or cheat sheets from List articles and long form content, slideshows from case studies and E-book from blog series.

5.     Create SlideShare

A great way to extend your blog post lifespan is by creating SlideShare from it. You can easily turn your points and visuals into slides and publish it on a different platform such as slideshare.net.
 
A good example of this is Steve Scott of Develop Good Habits
 
 
He turned the post into a SlideShare and got 144,362 views.
http://www.buzzblogger.com/top-wordpress-plugins/

 

Conclusion

There you have it!  Five mind-blowing ways you can extend your blog post lifespan. It is not as difficult as you think. All you need to do is to repurpose your old content and they will be as good as new again. It is time to go into your old blog post archives and bring out your best blog post for more traffic.

What other ways can you extend your blog post lifespan?

Hephzibah Asaolu

I am Hephzy Asaolu (aka Ladywriter), a professional Freelance content writer and blogger.

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