Updating blogs - SEO best practice

[digitalbua]

Thinking of new blog content and one option obviously is to check out historical popular blogposts via Analytics and do fresh versions of those.

So my question is what is best practice:

1. Copy and paste the old blogpost copy but edit it to be slightly different while still having the old blogpost live

or

2. just update the old one and re-promote

I assume it's better to have a new version of the blogpost?

[EGOL]

If you have a blog post that has been historically popular, the best practice would be to do some research and significantly improve the old blog post or completely rewrite it if that is what needs to be done.

Quality usually has a bigger impact than freshness.

[DonnaDuncan]

You have two options, completely rewrite or update.

If you completely rewrite the old post, then retire and redirect it. If you update the existing post, include content at the top of the post that explains what you've done, when you did it, and why. Republish.

Don't just copy and paste the old blog post, edit it slightly, and publish as a new one. You'll end up competing with yourself for rankings and confusing your audience.