How-To successfully monetize repeating content

Did you already build up an article stack?
Are you writing new articles all the time?

I bet you have subjects which come up frequently

Yesterday I had about 3,800 search visitors on one single article (and 600 related on a 2nd) because of one event which happens two or three times a year (a very heavy storm followed by local flooding). It is very important to identify those articles and stay on the subject.

A bloggers normal reaction would be to create a new article everytime the event occurs. I advise you to bring those articles (read: URLs) up to the front again. Use the old article, rewrite it, enhance and republish it.

The key is to use the existing search engine love for that URL!

Let me simply call it long-term brand building for ONE article. My philosophy is to write articles like they are a whole website on a subject. This has proved to be very successful and much less time consuming than always creating a new article. Ahmed points to the truth – And I expand the statement on ONE old and successful article compared to a new article:

… a page on a highly-trusted website would rank higher than a page on a newer, less-trusted website. Call it trust and authority, call it Google’s bias towards old sites, the bottom line is that well-established websites and blogs find it easier to rank high for 3-4 keyword search terms.

Source: Pt. 12 – Predictive SEO

Use existing SE authority – Identify repeating content

[Ryan Caldwell commenting on the same article:] I must say that the fundamental operating principle for all link building should be in terms of long-term brand building.

I would add that accumulating links on ONE article is better then having some links for every new article on the same subject.

How do I do it?

It’s nothing new, maybe a new recipe.

The basics

• Analyse incoming search engine traffic with 103bees.com. There I look at the landing pages and their specific traffic, search phrases and search keywords. I concentrate on the successful pages and not so much on the long tail.
• I doublecheck the successful pages with my analytics package. For long term number crunching I still use Google Analytics. Repeating traffic spikes can easily be spotted. More important is the fact that you can identify how much in advance the traffic is building up. This way you can schedule the right time for an update!
• Of course I am also using a calendar to remind me on upcoming events. My tool of choice is airset.com. The feature list is impressive. I simply sync my good old Palm Desktop software with airset. Alarm items are send via email, daily schedules.

The extras

Send update notifications to people who have referred to your page. Search for links to that existing URL and you are done. This is another advantage compared to a new article. You can use the existing link network and get traffic from already existing backlinks!

• Send email to webmasters or
• Simply write a new comment: XY article updated
• For both: Add a little excerpt of the news
• In case you commented before and only linked to your homepage use the correct deep link for your new comment even if the link was already mentioned in the article.

Remember: Timing is a very important factor! This is esp. true if you want to have good PPC conversion.

The example

Yesterday it was Sturmflut Hamburg: Webcam am Fischmarkt but I also have one article about how-to find regional flea markets which performances traffic spikes every weekend. And many other articles about recurring events. Some of them build traffic over month. Identifying this slow growing traffic wave and taking care of news early enough converted really well in PPC income because the advertisers aren’t stupid. I only had to follow.

Bonus: Aggregation?

This is a little opposite to the next point. It is aimed at bloggers who already have many small articles about one subject. Some alternatives:

• Aggregate all the collected info into the most successful article about that subject
• Aggregate all the collected info into a new article
• Create an extra archive article which points in form of a link list to the short articles

Bonus: Widen your blog network

If you are successful with long-term brand building for ONE long article you will know which subjects on that page people search for. Print out the article, get/export the search phrases and start to think about an own website for that single subject. Visually cut the article in parts and create single pages on a new site around your ‘new’ niche. This way your website network grows organically from successful content.