Constantly creating new content to fill your editorial calendar can be a time-consuming chore. And coming up with new content ideas doesn't get easier as time goes on, since you have already used many of your best ideas.
But what if you could take some of those best ideas and reuse them?
You don't want to simply copy and paste old content, because having duplicate content can hurt your SEO efforts. But that doesn't mean you can't take existing content and repurpose it to reach a wider audience.
There are a few ways you can repurpose your content while remaining SEO-friendly.
Same Content, Different Medium
One of the best ways to get more out of your content is to present it in different forms. If you completely change the medium being used, search engines will see each version as separate and original content--even if many of the words do stay the same.
For example, you could take a particularly useful blog post you have written and record it as an audio podcast. Even if all you did was read the blog post word-for-word, search engine algorithms would not see it as duplicate content; they would see it as a unique audio file. By including a unique written description of the podcast, with relevant keywords, you will have created a separate searchable piece of content. And now your content has an expanded audience: besides reaching blog readers, you also get it in front of people who prefer listening over reading.
Besides blogging and podcasting, other alternate forms your content can take include online video, eBooks or infographics. Each form can open up a new channel and new audience.
Updating Old Content
If you have content that is very old, you may be able to refurbish it and get more mileage.
Old content often gets buried on a site, and therefore goes unnoticed by new visitors. And even quality content can become a bit antiquated; facts and figures may need to be updated with new data, and SEO factors such as HTML markup standards change over time.
By taking your best old content and updating it, you can return it to the front page and have it seen by a new audience. You can also promote it anew on social media. After all, it may predate some social networks, and sites such as Twitter have a notoriously short memory.
Curating Content
If you are guest blogging or are interviewed on other sites, then you are creating additional quality content that does not go on your own site. Though you cannot duplicate such content without upsetting SEO (and the site that you provided the content for), you can create your own unique post about the outside article you contributed to. You can summarize what it is about, or add some additional comments that you had to leave out of the final draft, and then link to the full article on the other site.
This is essentially "content curation," except that it is your own content that is being curated. It provides a service to your regular audience, who likely did not notice your appearance on the other site and may want to hear what you had to say. Curating your own content is a relatively quick and easy process, and the resulting post gets ranked itself by the search engines--adding to the SEO benefits of guest blogging.
By following these methods to repurpose your content, you can create more valuable pieces of content in less time. And instead of hurting your SEO efforts, the repurposed content can actually improve your search visibility.
*Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net
