Content Republishing
Content Republishing: Brief Summary
Content republishing is the republication of existing content. For example, articles or contributions on a topic are put online in a blog – but are updated, slightly changed, or sometimes presented in a completely new format.
Content Republishing: Detailed Explanation
Content republishing is more than just republishing an existing article. It is a targeted tool for marketing, which ultimately optimises resources. Frequently, there might be no new ideas for a current topic – however, there might already be articles that could attract a lot of attention with just a few changes. As a marketing strategy, content republishing can be used in various ways:
- Articles are republished, put into different contexts or put into a new form – for example, a text article as a video.
- Existing content is given a new form and thus becomes part of a current marketing concept.
- Existing content is offered to a new target group – for example, as a newsletter.
All too often, high-quality articles are published at the wrong time and therefore receive little attention. But times are changing. A problem that previously only attracted attention from experts might suddenly become a highly topical issue that is being hotly debated online. In such cases, content republishing can reach high numbers of visitors with little additional effort.
The Goals of Content Republishing
A big problem for content marketing is that valuable content might not get enough attention. Good articles often exist in the shadows of a website – even if they offer unique content and are optimised for the relevant keywords. The reasons for this vary. Content republishing is a possible solution to this problem. Goals of content republishing include, for example:
- Increasing the reach of good content
- Addressing new target groups
- Search engine optimisation for existing pages that rank poorly on Google
- Using existing content as part of a new marketing campaign
Websites, especially those with a lot of visitors, rely on continuous content mapping as part of their marketing strategy and update their content as needed. This process ensures good search engine rankings.
How Refreshing Content Works
To refresh the content of an article, first, check a text for lack of topicality. Many helpful tools can make the author’s work easier:
- A W-question tool can be used to check whether the article describes the topic comprehensively (holistically). A WDF/IDF analysis may also be suitable for this purpose. Sometimes the terminology changes over time.
- Then check whether the structure of the article can be optimised – for example, with new headlines, graphics, images, additional videos or changes in tone.
- The internal and external linking must also be updated and renewed if necessary. Here, particular attention should be paid to dead links. Hyperlinks that lead nowhere are poison for SEO.
- When the new article is ready, an updated sitemap is submitted to Google. The article can also be publicised via social media.
How to Find the Right Content
How do you find the right content for content republishing? If you conduct regular content mapping, you will quickly come across hidden treasures that are suitable for reuse. It is not uncommon for older articles on a website to suddenly arouse more interest after a while. With content republishing, you can make great use of such developments. By using a new format or by modifying the content, you can achieve even higher visitor numbers and profit from current trends. These attributes indicate the popularity of particular pages:
-
- Backlinks: Each link to a page shows the value of the content. Google Analytics is particularly suitable for this.
- Traffic: How many clicks does the page achieve? Google Analytics also provides answers to this question.
- Ranking for relevant keywords: The Google Search Console shows the most important search terms with which a website is found.
- Mentions on social media or social shares: There are various tools for this, which can be found using the keyword “social media monitoring”.
- Bad for SEO: Duplicate Content
For successful content marketing, when republishing, it is important that you send the right signals to the search engines so that reused content is not considered duplicate content or copyright infringement. Thus, republishing requires change. The requirement, first and foremost, is for unique content.
Caution: The publication of an article under a new URL without deleting the content of the old URL is regularly evaluated by Google as duplicate content. It is, therefore, advisable to keep the existing URL and submit an updated sitemap to Google so that the page in question is crawled again. In principle, Google evaluates updates as positive for SEO; if keeping the original page is unavoidable, it should be set to “noindex“.
Why Change is Important in Content Republishing
Modify content, present it in a new format or simply place it in a new environment: Reuse works with different methods. For content republishing, the following tools have proven particularly effective:
- Publish online articles as white papers or e-books.
- Print the content of a website on paper and publish it as a print edition, for example, as a brochure.
- Present the most important information from a blog post in the form of an infographic.
- Produce the content of a successful article as a video and integrate it into the website.
Obviously, the last of these two options require a lot of work and creativity. However, working with an already existing template allows you to focus particularly on style and presentation because the content already exists. This significantly improves the quality of online material.
Conclusion
Content republishing is more than just recycling. If an article is good, there is no reason not to revitalise it in a new form. Content republishing demonstrates the potential of content by adding value to it or presenting it in a different format. Many websites are successful precisely because they continually review existing content and refresh it as needed. Content republishing is, therefore, an important aspect of SEO.
Join over 80,000 customers worldwide, and use Textbroker for your Content Marketing.
Register now for free