Start Blogging Again: How Bring Your Blog Back From the Dead

It's not unusual for bloggers to get distracted with something else and leave their blog unattended for a while. And when they finally find the time or inspiration to continue with it, they encounter issues like outdated topics, fewer subscribers than before and someone else's blog stealing all their glory.

Sound familiar? You may see these situations as the end of the world, but the truth is that things are not that drastic. With just a little extra effort, you'll have your blog up and running again in no time, maybe even turn it into something more successful than it was.

Here are some hints on how to do it.

1. Don’t change the domain

Your domain is something you are familiar with, and which gave you inspiration before. If you plan to write about the same topics and continue where you stopped, then keeping the old name is advisable and better way to go. There are a lot of advantages if you don’t change the name. One of them is that search engines are more likely to trust the older domains than the new ones.

Another advantage is the existing backlinks which could get you more traffic and higher rankings. If you keep the old links it means less stress and work on acquiring new ones, which is becoming more difficult by the day.

Furthermore, let’s not forget that your name is your brand. Even though you haven't been updating your blog, you still have followers who know you and are loyal to you, so changing your domain name would be like creating a completely different brand.

2. Refresh the look

Depending on how long you left your blog unattended, you will have to remodel it and refresh the look. This is something advisable to all blog owners after a certain time since the trends change fast and technology demands more updated and compatible websites. If you're not so good with design, check out the templates available online or hire an artist to create custom graphics and images. Another thing you can do is to try the minimalist design. It's always been a popular choice in the web design community this year, and it will continue to rule in 2020.

3. Edit the content

Some experienced writers will often advise to start fresh rather than continue the story after the prolonged period of time. But if you wrote blog posts on something you're passionate about, consider another option. Instead of removing old content from your website, archive it and allow people to revisit them. Don’t be afraid to edit it or add something to them, since after a while of being dormant, you might have some broader and different opinions on the topics you wrote about.

Re-post the most commented articles as new content, and if you don’t change the permalink structure, everyone who linked to them before will still be able to find them. At the same time, your recycled blog posts will gain a new audience since archived posts are rarely frequented by visitors.

4. Check Your Writing

If you started your blog years ago, chances are you've become a much better writer since. Revisiting and editing all of your old posts could take forever on your own, so why not speed things up by using ProWritingAid?

ProWritingAid is more than a grammar checker. The editing tool highlights areas where you could improve readability, showing you where you've repeated sentence starts, used passive voice or could do with varying your sentence lengths.

One thing I noticed about my older blog posts was just how relatable I was trying to make them seem. You know, when you want to make your reader feel like you know them, so you refer to them as "you" all the time? There were six pronouns in that sentence alone, and they're just not necessary.

ProWritingAid's Pronoun Report can help you catch excess pronound use. By making a few changes, you can refresh your content, make it seem more sophisticated and keep it engaging for your new readers.

You can find out more about ProWritingAid's reports here.

5. Update the SEO

Being away for a while can have an impact on the SEO on your website. SEO experts from GWM suggest you download the latest free Chrome extension to check your rankings for different keywords. Since the Internet still ran while you were away, your blog was constantly under the scrutiny of the search engine algorithms. That’s why is important that you check your SEO for any changes or discrepancies. It may be that your ranking improved or that it went downward since you’ve been gone due to the changes in the keywords.

Using the Chrome extension and similar free tools will give you insight into the state of your blog's SEO and how to correct it. We have lots of helpful articles about how to be an SEO boss on our blog. If you want to cut right to the chase, why not check out the top 11 essential skills for SEO copywriting in 2020?

6. Create full promo on social media

Even though you didn’t make any serious changes to your blog, like your domain name or topics you write about, still you will have to lead your own marketing campaign to reach a broader audience and increase the traffic. This means that social media campaigns are not an option, but a necessity if you want to gain popularity. Fortunately, there's lots of great tools out there to help you out.

But before you do this, make sure that you know main features of each platform, like the audience it gathers and media formats it uses to convey messages. Wasting your time on the wrong social media campaign is uneconomical and inefficient and will only use up the resources you could have spent on the right one.

Take aways

Before you go on hiatus next time, address your readers and inform them that the blog will be unattended for a while. This is a polite and respectful way to keep your current audience and gain a reputation as someone who cares about their readers and followers.

When you come back to your blog after a break, take the time to create a sound plan with milestones and goals before posting again. This will help you to avoid chaos and ensure you don't waste your energy on insignificant details. Instead, use your energy to revive the content your readers love most.

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