Have you ever found yourself thinking: I should go back and edit some of my old stuff! While I’ve often encountered some resistance to this idea, it’s actually a good idea, and something I do often. In fact, sometimes revisiting old posts and rewriting them can be good for a great many reasons. If the post wasn’t doing anything for you, it’s possible to revive it to be a post that you’re actually happy with.

As I sift through my archive of old blog posts, I often feel a sense of nostalgia. Some were written hastily, just to keep up with a self-imposed rigorous posting schedule. In the past, I was content to churn out content as quickly as possible, eager to share my thoughts with the world. But now, as I peruse these old posts, I realize just how much I’ve grown as a writer. My voice today is much stronger, my prose more fluid, and my ideas more refined.

But a handful of these posts were my babies, and there’s a little tinge of pride that I feel when reading over them. These were the pieces I considered my babies, crafted with care and passion. But each time I read through them, I’ll notice something that had previously escaped my attention. Many of them are never as polished as they could be.

During the pandemic, with both a newfound sense of purpose and for little else to do, I set out to revisit those old pieces and give them the love and attention they deserved. I read them through with a critical eye, analyzing every sentence and scrutinizing every word. With each revision, I felt some accomplishment, happy to improve upon something I had once created and bring it new life.

It wasn’t just about finding satisfaction in making something better, though. Revisiting those old posts gave me a chance to reflect and to appreciate the journey that had brought me to where I was as a writer and person today. It was a reminder that growth and progress were possible, even in areas where I’d previously felt stagnant.

Certainly this personal journey of growth and reflection made revisiting my old posts so rewarding. But it was also a chance to share my ideas with a new audience and to reach out to those who may have missed them before. As I continue to share these revised pieces with the world, I feel a renewed sense of purpose, knowing that I’m contributing something of value to both the unconscious and conscious collective.

Revisiting and rewriting these old posts isn’t about improving the writing itself. It was about recognizing the potential that exists in all of us and what we create. We must embrace the journey that leads us to become better versions of ourselves, and oftentimes this requires much retrospective and self-editing. 

No matter how good we may think we are today, there is always room for growth and improvement. I see returning and editing my older work not just as a useful and necessary form of reflection, but also as a celebration of the power of words to connect, inspire, and transform ourselves and others.

Rewriting for SEO

Another motivation to rewrite older posts was to get the search engines to look at my older writing again. I’m always seeking some new way I can reword something or restructure the post for Search Engine Optimization purposes. But some posts were never written with that intention, and many of these more obscure posts are becoming the backbone of the books I’m still yet to write.

When I have pieces that get lots of attention, then suddenly don’t, I have to remind myself that it isn’t that they aren’t good. It’s that they are buried beneath a deluge of newer content. So, when I go through my archives year after year, I’ve begun to see my older words like buried treasure. Sure, they’re waiting to be discovered by someone who cared enough to dig for them, but that rarely happens. 

When I set out on a mission to rewrite my posts, my motivations were not entirely altruistic. It wasn’t just to improve them for improvement’s sake or even to give them a chance to be seen by a new audience. Much of my thought process hung on the fact I could improve their visibility in the search engines. 

With each revision, I carefully craft my headlines and keywords, tweaking and adjusting until they are just right. I dig deep into the analytics, examining which posts are still getting traffic and which have been lost in the digital abyss.

Actually, the posts that I always want to look over the most are those that actually do well. Those are the ones that I tend to read over and over the most. There is always this nagging feeling at the back of my mind that I could improve it somehow. 

It may be a simple word choice here and there. Maybe the overall mood of the piece just doesn’t feel right. A lot of times it’s some other feeling I get that I can’t readily explain. I tend to just leave the popular posts alone, though. They are usually “good enough” for me, but lately, I just want to go back and bring a lot of posts closer to “perfection.” Since I write primarily evergreen content, I want to keep every post that I have fresh and relevant. And, I have more than a few that no longer are quite relevant. To me, that is a problem.

This is a painstaking process that I continue to pursue each year. I’m forever driven by a desire to see my words take flight once more. Now, as I continue to rewrite and update, I do see some results. Once-forgotten posts do begin to climb the rankings once again, and it’s especially rewarding to see the pop up in search engine results alongside much newer high-ranking content.

Just seeing one post among a dozen gain new traction is a heady feeling, knowing that my words were once again being seen by eyes other than my own. When I see a post getting brand new organic search traffic, I know this is a new lease on life for those words, a chance to shine once again in the digital sky.

Still, the vast majority of these rewritten posts never do rank ever again. Many times it’s simply that the questions that used to be asked simply are no longer relevant. Some were written for an intended audience that never consumed it or wasn’t ever clearly defined. They may be written well and have great ideas, but no one ever saw them. For every one that succeeds, many fall short into what I consider to be duds.

For me, online writing has never been about boosting my own ego or visibility. It was about sharing my ideas and my voice with the world, and more importantly, to connect with readers who might never have found me otherwise. Rewriting my old posts is a way to ensure that my voice continues to be heard, even in the midst of a constantly changing online landscape. I didn’t fail at this, but when more than nine out of every ten posts that fall out of favor with the search algorithms never return, I do feel somehow injured.

Finally, I came to the decision that whatever posts refused to rank in search engines needed to be pruned entirely. But, they wouldn’t be doomed to oblivion, either. Rather, I’d find a way to collect them in an entirely different form. Many of those posts have evolved into the essays which make up much of my website content you’re reading from today.

But, for those posts which do still find glances from strange and unusual queries on a regular basis, I continue to revisit them. These are the posts which I’ll continue tweaking and adjusting until they are as good as they can be. It’s not just for the sake of the search engines, but for the sake of my own growth and my deep desire to share my words with anyone who cares enough to listen. As for everything else, those words will one day find their way into some book.

Your Writing Should Live and Breathe as You Do

Writing should be a living, breathing thing. It’s perfectly OK to want to breathe new life into an old blog post, or page, or even your author bio. The last thing you want is to read something and feel like it simply isn’t doing what it should. Chances are, if you feel that way, then others who read it may feel the same.

I’ve come to see the words on the page as not just static symbols, but as living, breathing entities. My words are an extension of myself, an expression of my thoughts and feelings. As such, they deserved to be treated with care and respect, to be given the space to grow and evolve just as I do.

My writing is not a static artifact, frozen in time like a photograph or a painting. My works are  living, breathing organisms, with the potential to change and adapt just as any living creature does. So I began to treat all of my writing that way, nurturing it and tending to it like a garden, watching as it grew and flourished under my care.

One disturbing pattern that began to emerge was that much of my writing didn’t reflect myself. I was often writing to the expectations and demands of others. But my best writing is always a reflection of myself, a mirror of my soul. So, when I come across a piece of writing that isn’t reflective of who I’ve been or who I am now, it deserves to be either tossed aside as an artifact of an unfortunate mistake, or reforged into something that deserves my utmost attention and dedication. 

Even so, I’ve allowed my voice to grow and change over time, just as my own voice did, knowing that my writing was a direct reflection of who I was at that moment. But as they become revised, I know that some parts of those reflections become distorted. After all, part of revision is necessarily bringing the writing to a newer and higher standard. But I still try to retain as much of my naivety and innocence in my older work as I can, even when it becomes folded into newer volumes.

However, I also have come to realize that my words aren’t just for me, but for anyone who cares to read them. They’re a part of myself that I share with the world. So when I sit down to edit them, I must ask myself, is this even something I want to share of myself anymore, or have I outgrown it? In the end, my writing isn’t just a reflection of who I am and where I’ve been, but also a living, breathing extension of myself. So, I must treat it as such, nurturing it with care and attention, allowing it to grow and evolve just as I do. 

How do you feel about editing old stuff? Do you just like to leave it alone and revisit any past ideas or topics in a brand new post? Or are you one, like me, who’s always tweaking?

~ Amelia Desertsong