How do you send traffic to OLD posts on your blog/site? Got any ideas for recycling quality and timeless content?

If you have a self-hosted Wordpress blog, there is a great free plugin called "Tweet Old Posts" which will promote older posts on a schedule you set.

http://wordpress.org/plugins/tweet-old-post/

It works really well and is simple to setup.

Cheers,
Hani

Another idea is to repurpose your old content into fresh, new content. If you've got a series of related, older posts, consider putting those into some sort of downloadable pdf (in exchange for email ) that your readers can take with them and then link to the old posts in that PDF.

If you're creating a 'how-to' guide and using older posts as some of the content, make sure to link directly to those posts in the PDF. Head over to http://blog.hubspot.com/ for awesome examples of this in production.

Assuming you're running WordPress, you should explore the plugin called Insights from Vladimir Prelovac ( http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/insights ) to help you connect with older content and media, as well as SEO Smart Links ( http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/seo-smart-links ) to help you automatically interlink older posts.

A third option is to fire up Adwords and build a campaign around your old posts. If you're doing this, then ensure that you're funneling those paid-for clicks from Google > Old Posts > call to action to New Post / Subscriber. Capturing new visitors and showing them your great archived posts, then pushing them to new ones has been quite effective for our customers and encouraging engagement.

You can also make:

updates to the old posts
write a follow-up posts to the old ones
repurpose your content: use the blog posts to write an ebook, make a webinar, etc.
make different lists of your posts in a post
make a youtube video on the same topic and link to the blog post in the description

Consider writing the "Best of" page, but don't put it on your site. Instead, use it as a guest blog post on another site. The links will go to you and it's great content for the other blog.

Thanks, everyone! These are all great ideas!

Cheers,
@alexisgrant

To bring back old blog posts to life following steps can be helpful:
Step 1 – Make a list of all your posts: The first step is to get the URL or title of all of your blog posts. The simplest way to do this, by far, is with your analytics software. If you are using Google Analytics, navigate to “Behaviour > Overview”. You will see a list of your top posts on the right. Click the “view full report” link in the bottom right-hand corner. This will show you a more detailed list of your posts. However, there will still only be the default list of 10 posts. Scroll to the bottom and change the “show rows” option to 5,000. Then, go back up to the top of the page and click “export.” Pick one of the spreadsheet options in the drop-down menu. When you open the spreadsheet, you’ll see all of the data from Google Analytics in a more convenient table.
Step 2 – Add any other relevant metrics: Now that you have your list of posts, you need to make sure that you have all of the data you need. The final step in this process will be to pick the posts that make the most sense to drive organic traffic to. Here, you need to determine how you will make that decision. The most common metrics to use are:
1. goal conversion rate (usually email list sign-ups)
2. time on page
3. bounce rate
4. social shares
5. backlinks per 1,000 visitors (or per any number of visitors)
Ideally, you should have already had goal conversion tracking in place in Google Analytics, so you will have that data available in your spreadsheet, as well as time on page and bounce rate. To get social share counts, if you would like, you can use any one of a number of social shares counting tools. Just Google “bulk social share checker,” and you will see that there are a variety of options. Most, unfortunately, have a limit on how many URLs you can check at once. If you have a particularly large site, I recommend using these custom functions in Google Sheets, so that you can get them all at once. Also, backlinks can be something that you are after. By finding the posts that have attracted the most links in the past, you can send traffic to them and hopefully get more. If you have gotten most of your links from reaching out to site owners, this metric would not be too useful. I would recommend any of the other ones that I mentioned earlier. However, if you are set on trying to get a few extra backlinks, use a tool, like Majestic’s bulk backlink checker, but you will need a paid account. You paste in your URLs, just like the social checker and then you will get a spreadsheet with your link stats for each URL. You can export this and then add this data to your main table. Then, simply divide the number of backlinks (or linking domains) to each URL in your spreadsheet by the number of visitors that you have had for each. This will give you a “backlink/visitor” metric that you can use to compare them.
Step 3 – Decide which posts to prioritize: Now’s the easy part. You need to identify the many or the few old blog posts that have had the best impact on your business. Most of the tactics we are going to go through give you control of which posts you will send extra traffic to. The more posts that you pick to focus on, the less traffic will go to each individual post, so try not to pick too many posts. You can either copy these posts into a handier text file or spreadsheet, or you can simply highlight each blog post you plan to focus on.
These are the few strategies to recycle your old posts:
1. Create New Articles from Old Ones: Some of the best things in life are spinoffs of other great things (e.g. Frasier and Cheers). The same holds true for content. One of the best ways to recycle old articles is by converting them into a new series. For example, you can take a list article and transform it into several individual content pieces by breaking down each item on the list. This will allow you to add more details and background information to each element and rank for multiple keywords. Of course, not all list articles can lend themselves to this method, so there are a few things you need to consider:
1. Does every item on the list have the potential to become an individual story?
2. Are people interested in finding out more about it?
The reverse also works. You can take a group of 3, 5, 8, 10 related items and combine them into a master-list for quick reads. This will make it easier for readers to find the information that they are interested in.
2. Write A Part Two Follow-up: Identify an article that performed extremely well in the past and extend its life by creating a part two follow-up. For example, if you wrote the beginner's guide to on-site SEO, maybe a part two with the beginner's guide to off-site SEO would benefit your readers. Make sure your article is extremely informative and eye-pleasing.
3. Turn Your Best Articles into Infographics: Graphics, especially Infographics, represent a great way to break down a data-heavy blog post into a visually attractive and highly shareable piece of content. They are also a great way to generate high-quality links. According to a recent study, websites that publish infographics on a regular basis have 12% more traffic than those that do not.
4. Revisit, Refresh and Rewrite Old Articles: The nature of online articles means that older ones are quickly forgotten, while fresh ones are preferred by search engines. This means that, with time, some of your best posts will disappear from the archives never to be seen again. Instead of giving up on long forgotten content you can refresh, revisit or rewrite it to breathe new life onto it. New facts, information, studies or resources can help you tell your story better and attract more visitors. You can even change the headline of the article if you feel that it is not the best representation of your content. Just do not change the URL, as it will generate a broken link.
5. Transform Articles into SlideShare Presentations Or eBooks: Meaningful quotes, interesting statistics and actionable advice make for great slides. Take your most successful blogposts and transform them into SlideShare presentations. Because SlideShare has a huge, growing community, you will expose your articles to potential customers and viewers. The secret to creating successful presentations lies in mixing well-chosen imagery with informative content.
Other Ways to Recycle Old Content:
1. Turn your blogpost into a podcast topic. Copy blogger is the prime example of content marketing done right through podcasts. If you have a loyal audience, you should consider transforming your articles into podcast topics. (e.g. interview an expert that shares your opinions, discuss other perspectives, answer visitor questions etc.)
2. Turn old article content into quote tweets and link them to the post. This will help you drive more visitors to your site.
3. Create a FAQ page from old articles. Your readers probably have little time and a ton of questions. Instead of creating a FAQ article from scratch you can create a short blurb from older articles that answers the most important questions.
4. Add an "Old Posts" or "Popular Posts" section to your blog.
5. Craft a Daily/Weekly Email Series. Some articles lend themselves to bite-sized chunks which can be mailed to readers through daily/weekly series. Take this article as an example. Each of the points mentioned above can be sent to readers via email.
6. Repost your content on Quora. This social answer forum makes it extremely easy for you to repurpose old content.
7. Promote older articles on social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter or Facebook.
8. Republish guest posts on your own blogs.

Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath