Is it worth editing older blog posts for SEO purposes?

[TKIGWebTeam]

The title of the question asks it all.

One site I currently work on has a handful of blog posts that rank really well in the SERPS for certain "long-tail" searches. Would it be worth the time to, when I have it, to go back and edit the blogs little by little to help with SEO and building some links throughout the site to get people where we need them to go?

Basically "sprucing" up the blog posts to make them more readable, more engaging and help some link building efforts within the domain.

Thoughts?

[EGOL]

Would it be worth the time to go back and edit the blogs little by little to help with SEO...

Sure, some people pay SEOs to do this very thing!

...and building some links throughout the site to get people where we need them to go?  Basically "sprucing" up the blog posts to make them more readable, more engaging...

This is a great idea... that's the sign of a good webmaster.

....and help some link building efforts within the domain.

Yes, it will help.  Great ideas.  Good luck!

[SEM-Freak]

I guess it really depends how old the "old posts" are.

If the posts are relatively recent, "sprucing" up the blog posts to make them more readable and more engaging is a possibility (and maybe a good idea if the original was not well written).

It might be better and more natural to write new posts on the topic which add value to the original butink back to the older posts as a point of reference. This should improve the positioning for the long tail on the old posts and is

I would not recommend transparent activity like going back to the old posts stuffing them full of keywords and a couple of keyword rich links to other parts of the site - Google will see you are trying to game the system and most likely discount any potential benefit.

[TKIGWebTeam]

Thanks for the reply.

Our blog is only about 6 months old. The first 3 months or so of posts were really poorly written and I did not have the time to really "fine-tune" like I normally would. That job was left to someone doing the initial editing... Needless to say, looking back at them, they are really, really bad.

I'm not really interested in stuffing these older blogs with additional keywords or adding keyword rich anchor text in the posts.

The content was poorly written. We are getting a lot of traffic to our blog through some of these posts, but the bounce rate remains extremely high. The entry keyphrases seem to be "dead-on" for the content itself, at least for the most part. I won't lie, I would like to put a few links within some edited posts that would take someone to another page on the site that would be helpful or another blog.

Still not really sure what to...

[IPINGlobal54]

Blog posts tend to be timely and topical and can date with time, (whereas articles (IMO) should be as timeless as possible and state fact). With blogging, situations change over time and so something written 6 months ago could be seen and viewed in a very different light - if that's the case, time for a new post, citing the changes and differences - resulting in both new (more well written) post, and a shiny new piece of content with links to the old post.

I find I might cover the exact same subject 3 or 4 times a year, writing a new post and citing the older ones shows consistency and awareness on your part for users, increases internal linking and subsequently increases the stickiness of your site.

Obviously if you have any glaring SEO errors or holes in your older posts it wouldn't hurt to patch them up - but time and progression are always excellent reasons for new posts and new content.

[TKIGWebTeam]

"time and progression are always excellent reasons for new posts and new content"

Great point. I don't feel that the current blog posts are outdated as of yet and in need of a re-written post, they just aren't up to "snuff" for potential readers and visitors.

The main goal I have for editing these older posts is strictly for current user-experience. That is why I am battling the idea of going back to them, re-reading and making the minor edits needed to help or just leave it and write a new article, as you have mentioned.

[SEM-Freak]

You could update the older posts (making sure the new internal links are not overly SEO'd) and then ask your programmer to turn off date display on all posts more than 3 months old. Users then arriving on the posts will not be bouncing because they see it as an "old" post and will benefit from your updated content.

[TKIGWebTeam]

Love this idea!

Thank you for sharing Geoff.

[IPINGlobal54]

If its the improvement of user experience - then the addition of relevant links is worth doing definitely, with respect to changing the content itself, I would be inclined to only make very minor edits and not disturb any of the long tail phrases you are ranking for.