(Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes)

You have hundreds of articles buried in your archives, spread over months, possible years of time. Good articles, not recycled pap mindlessly parroting what everyone already hears in the echo chamber.

What to do with these shining pearls of wisdom?

You could:

• Leave them alone. Anonymous. Neglected. Lonely.
• Repurpose them for use as guest posts or for publication in article directories.
• Revise and republish your best work, bringing timeless, accurate and updated information to a fresh generation of readers.

Let’s find our best articles. Let’s revise and republish them and for your latest cohort of readers. Your regular readers need a break anyway. There’s only so much brilliance (or BS) anyone should be expected to tolerate.

Before we get started, pop on over to Site Sketch 101 and read Nicholas Cardot‘s article on Recycling Blog Posts. Let’s recap: You want to recycle old posts to 1. save time; 2. build page rank; 3. build on previous successes. You increase the value of older articles by 1. leaving the permalink alone; 2. retitling if necessary; 3. revising or rewriting for clarity and accuracy; 4. adding new ideas, and 5. removing outdated material.

As it turns out, Nicholas’ in-depth article seems to have been inspired by Blogussion‘s article The Power of Recycling Posts. Alex, the author of the Blogussion article, notes that commentors often provide fresh insight about the article, which is very useful for updating and expanding on your existing article.

Recycling your older articles may or may not be an effective strategy for you. Even if you decide to recycle articles, not all your articles may be appropriate for recycling. Let’s take a closer look.

Is recycling blog posts right for you?

That’s a very good question, but I can’t really answer that question for you. You have to answer it for yourself. Here’s my point of view:

1. There’s 25 articles in the Website In A Weekend eCourse. These articles need to be kept accurate and up to date. Putting the updated articles back in the feed motivates me to keep them fresh, and provides new readers a hook into the eCourse. This provides a twice-yearly update for each article in the eCourse.
2. The 25 eCourse articles are part of the WordPress 101, which comprises the entire pillar content on Website In A Weekend. These articles must be maintained. Articles which require extensive revision will be republished.
3. Many of the older articles on Website In A Weekend attract search engine traffic, but most were written before there was any commenting activity here. There’s a lot of good content with no comments at all. Recycling will put this in the hands of people who will find it valuable.
4. I’m interested in the actual behavior of readers and search engines, not assumed behavior or “how things ought to be.” Only way to find out is by recycling articles myself and testing the results.
5. Some people seem adamantly opposed to any form of revision or republication. I’ve carefully considered their opinions. People who aren’t taking “blogging” seriously, as in, making it part of their income or branding efforts, aren’t going to have much influence on my decisions.
6. No way I’m going to revise 25% or less of some article and repost it as new content. By new content, I mean creating a new, unique permalink. That’s just silly to me.
7. The capability to revise is one of the most powerful aspects of publishing on the web! For good or for ill, this is true. I prefer to leverage this for good uses. I’ve seen it leveraged for other reasons, but I will not publish such. I can’t prove anything and I don’t have the cash to fight a SLAPP. Shoot some pool with me sometime, I’ll tell you a story of flames and firemen and freeways. But I’m digressing…

   In 1994, I recall thinking: “Wow! I can rewrite stuff that’s incorrect!” So count on it.

8. I consider my permalinks the most valuable asset I create on Website In A Weekend. Recycling articles is an excellent way to maintain ensure the value of my permalinks increase: better content gets more widely promoted.
9. The Website In A Weekend editorial policy explicitly states articles on Website In A Weekend are subject to revision. Plans for revising and republishing have been in the works for months. Writing comprehensive articles takes time, a lot of time. Publishing first, then revising as new source material becomes available, or tehcnical changes requires updating, just makes perfect sense.

Should you choose to recycle, I’m going to break ranks and recommend you examine your permalink. Most people advise against changing permalinks, but if you really need to fix a bad one, this is a good time. The key is to have a plan.

If your permalink is decent, leave it alone.

Fix your permalink, if necessary

Take the time to evaluate an article’s permalink. If you have a crappy permalink on your article, now is a really good time to fix it.

It’s not difficult, but you need to take some care to get it right.

How you choose to create permalinks is largely your own business. There’s several methods, each with advantages and disadvantages. I use Godley’s Redirection plugin to handle permanent redirection tasks. The redirection plugin is not difficult to use, as long as you understand what you need to do.

Whether you decide to change permalinks or not, you need to pay close attention once you republish.

Check your RSS feed immediately

When you republish, you need to check your feed directly. Some reader, Google reader for example, only refresh your screen view with items fetched since your last update. These readers check feeds on their own times, and can be an hour or more after you publish before they show your update. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’ve caught major blunders, really crappy drafts accidently published, before they hit the feed.

The problem is it’s difficult for you as Google reader user to force Reader to examine your feed. What you can do is paste your feed directly into your browser URL form, and check it there.

Note: you can’t do this with the same browser you’re logged into Reader. Reader is too smart for that. It checks the cache for an existing subscription, then displays the current state of your subscription. You can check it at Feedburner though. I use Safari or Internet Explorer.

What articles have you revised?

I’d be absolutely delighted to list three people who have revised and republished articles, especially for retaining permalinks while updating content as advocated here.

1. Holly Jahangiri gets the first slot with Chores: to Pay, or Not to Pay? This article was originally published on Blogger, then moved when Holly self-hosted with WordPress.
2. Second slot, it could be yours.
3. Third slot is better than no slot.

Questions? Comments? Leave a note in the comments.