How to use AI to refresh old blog content

Unique, quality and intent-focused content remains a key element of any digital marketing strategy. But in today’s rapidly changing landscape, it’s easy for your once-promising blog content to become stale and outdated.

Gone are the days when you’d publish a blog post and forget about it. As the web gets inundated with new content daily, it’s even more crucial to consider your content’s fresh and relevant.

This article explores an AI-assisted process to help you revisit, refresh, and rejuvenate your old blog posts and keep them informative and useful to your users.

Understanding the importance of refreshed content

Search engines tend to prefer fresh and relevant content. When users ask questions, search algorithms aim to give accurate and up-to-date answers. 

And while your old blog post might have valuable insights, some parts could be outdated.

Updating old content improves its value for readers and shows search engines that our content is always current, evolving and rank-worthy.

Dig deeper: Creating new content vs. optimizing old webpages: Which is better for SEO?

The role of AI in a content revamp

Traditional content audits can be time-consuming, particularly with large blog libraries. While blogs help us establish scale and authority, maintaining their long-term effectiveness becomes increasingly challenging.

So, where does AI come into the picture?

There are a number of AI tools that can scan your content, identify outdated information, suggest relevant updates, and even pinpoint where user engagement dropped. 

This isn’t about replacing the human touch but enhancing it. By offering data-driven insights, AI can guide your revamp strategy, ensuring that your efforts are effective and efficient.

For instance, AI-driven tools can:

• Analyze keyword trends to suggest the inclusion of newer, relevant terms.
• Identify broken links or outdated references that need replacements.
• Gauge reader sentiment and feedback, highlighting sections that might benefit from more in-depth explanations or updates.
• Provide examples of similar content that is performing well to enable you to compare and ultimately improve your own.

Human creativity meets AI efficiency

The essence of good content remains rooted in human creativity and understanding. While you should use AI tools to help speed up the content audit process, it should not be relied on 100%. 

It’s down to that invaluable human understanding to review any suggestions and make a judgment call based on the individual’s SEO expertise and experience. 

AI only provides the data. It’s up to us humans to craft the narrative.

Dig deeper: How to do a content audit as painlessly as possible

Rewriting and refreshing old blog posts with AI assistance

Now that we have identified those blogs that need improvement, we have two options: 

• A refresh.
• A complete rewrite.

Refreshing existing content

Giving your blog posts a refresh can breathe new life into their performance. 

If you have a blog that drives a lot of traffic already or used to drive traffic but that traffic is starting to fall, then this is the perfect time to give those blog posts a refresh. 

By taking the time to update any factual information and ensure relevancy, you can help to ensure you’re your blog posts continue to attract new visitors.

Here’s a framework you can follow.

Identify outdated information

• Action: Review the blog post to pinpoint outdated facts, data, references, or perspectives.
• How AI helps: Advanced AI tools can cross-reference your content with a vast database of current information, highlighting discrepancies or outdated sections in your blog post.

Content enhancement and expansion

• Action: Look for areas that can benefit from added depth or breadth. This may involve elaborating on points briefly touched upon or introducing new, relevant sub-topics to make the post more comprehensive.
• How AI helps: By analyzing current top-performing content on similar topics, AI can suggest areas where your post could be enhanced or expanded to match the depth of top-ranking articles.

Tone and style consistency

• Action: Ensure the entire blog post maintains a consistent tone and style, especially if new sections are added or substantial edits are made.
• How AI helps: AI-driven writing assistants can evaluate the overall tone and style of a piece, ensuring that any additions or revisions match the original voice of the article.

Semantic analysis

• Action: Ensure that the message remains consistent and that updates don’t unintentionally change the original meaning of sections.
• How AI helps: AI tools can understand context and semantics. They can provide insights into whether the revised content maintains its original intent and meaning.

Visual content update

• Action: If the blog contains outdated diagrams, charts, or images, these must be updated or replaced to align with the refreshed content.
• How AI helps: AI-driven design tools can enhance images, suggest new visual content, or even generate basic infographics based on the updated text.

Readability and engagement

• Action: Review the flow of the article. Ensure that the updates haven’t disrupted the readability and that the content remains engaging from start to finish.
• How AI helps: There are AI tools that can score the readability of content, suggest improvements to enhance flow, and provide metrics on potential user engagement based on text analysis.

Feedback incorporation

• Action: If users have left comments or feedback on the original post, consider incorporating relevant insights or addressing common questions in the refresh.
• How AI helps: By analyzing user comments to extract common themes or questions, providing a summarized view of areas the refreshed content should address.

The need for rewriting

If you have a blog post that used to perform but now gets little or no traffic, it might be time for a complete rewrite.

Using AI tools, you can meticulously scan and analyze old content to understand its tone, style, and overall sentiment. This understanding then becomes really useful in guiding the rewriting process.

One of the remarkable strengths of AI lies in tone matching. It ensures that the refreshed piece retains the unique voice of its original – be it professional, casual, humorous, or authoritative. This can be especially useful when rewriting old blog posts originally written by someone else.

Beyond preserving the original tone, AI also excels in identifying areas for content expansion. By staying attuned to current trends and common user queries, AI can suggest where more detail or context might elevate the piece. 

Alternatively, you can feed in these expansion points, and AI can ensure that this is written in a way that fits in with the rest of the blog post.

Dig deeper: 17 tips to improve your AI-assisted content creation process

Balancing AI and human touch when refreshing your content

When using AI to refresh or rewrite content, the goal should be to harness its insights, aid in content expansion, and maintain a concise structure. Yet, the core message, tone, and perspective must remain rooted in human expertise.

To stand out in the crowded marketplace, we must use these tools to enhance our existing content creation process and improve efficiency. 

The optimal content refresh strategy blends AI’s analytical capabilities with the authenticity and depth only a subject matter expert can provide. 

Striking this balance ensures that our blog content remains cutting-edge and relatable, meeting our audience’s needs without losing our unique voice.