You revive a dormant company blog in four steps: review what you have, assign each old post one of four decisions (keep, update, merge, delete with redirect), set a topic plan for the first twelve weeks and then publish on a fixed rhythm. Old posts aren't dead weight, they're often the pages still bringing visitors; Search Console shows which ones. Based on experience, visible changes in Google can be expected after six to eight weeks at the earliest.
The picture is familiar: 23 posts, the last one from February 2023, the section is called "News", and the top entry announces a trade fair that's long since over. Every visitor can see at a glance that nobody writes here any more. Even so, this blog is worth more than an empty one. It has addresses that Google knows, and usually two or three posts that still bring visitors. This page describes how you get from standstill back into a rhythm in four weeks, without losing that stock.
Week 1: Stocktaking
Before you write a new post, you need a list of all the old ones. Three steps:
- Export all posts. Address, title, date, word count. You can do this in any CMS via the post overview or the sitemap.
- Open Search Console. Performance report, twelve-month period, view by pages. Note down clicks and impressions for each address. If Search Console isn't set up yet, do that first; the guide is at Setting up Search Console. Without data, you're deciding blind.
- Categorise every post. Four decisions are enough.
| Decision | Criterion | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Keep | Still gets clicks, content is accurate | Nothing, at most add internal links to it from new posts |
| Update | Has impressions, few clicks, content outdated or thin | Revise the text, keep the address, adjust the date |
| Merge | Two or more posts on the same topic | Build one strong post, redirect the others to it with a 301 |
| Delete with redirect | No visits, no content (Christmas greetings 2019, trade fair report, 80 words) | Delete, redirect the address with a 301 to the most relevant post or category |
It's worth taking care with updates, because the old address keeps its history with Google. For how this works in practice, see Updating old blog posts. For deletions, one rule from Google's documentation applies: don't redirect everything to the homepage as a blanket solution. Google can treat such redirects as a "soft 404", meaning a page not found. The target must match in content. The technical steps are at 301 redirects.
Example calculation for the typical case with 23 posts: five kept, four updated, six merged into two, eight deleted. That leaves eleven addresses, each with a purpose.
Week 2: Twelve-week topic plan
A blog goes dormant when the topics run out. That's why the plan comes before the first new post, not after. Three sources are enough for a quarter:
- Customer questions. The questions that keep coming up on the phone, in quote discussions and by email. Note them down for a week, that usually gives you ten topics.
- Search Console. Search queries for which your website gets impressions but has no suitable page. These are topics where Google is already considering you.
- Season. What's on your customers' minds over the next three months: heating season, tax returns, gardening season, start of school.
That gives you twelve titles, each with one sentence on the core message. For how to set up the plan in an hour, see Editorial plan for the company blog. Important: the plan covers twelve weeks, not twelve months. An annual plan is a burden at relaunch, not a tool.
Weeks 3 and 4: Start the rhythm
In week 3, two posts appear, so the section no longer starts with the 2023 trade fair report. From week 4 onwards, the rhythm is whatever you can sustain, usually one post a week. Alongside this, four tidying tasks, each taking half an hour:
- Delete empty or once-used categories, rename the section from "News" to "Advice" or "Knowledge" if that's what the content is.
- Check internal links: old posts link to pages that no longer exist. Fix or remove them.
- Check the sitemap: deleted addresses must no longer appear in it, new ones must.
- Make author and date visible. A blog without a date still looks old even after relaunching.
What you can expect from Google
Google crawls a website at the pace it knows from its history. A blog that's been silent for two years gets visited less often, and that only changes once new content appears regularly. There's no relaunch bonus, and according to Google's documentation, there's no penalty for the pause either. Based on the experience values this website quotes, rankings move after six to eight weeks, and a noticeable increase in enquiries usually comes from the fourth month onwards. For why this takes so long, see How long does SEO take?. During this time, measure impressions, not clicks; impressions react first.
So it doesn't go dormant again
The blog didn't go quiet last time without reason. Usually it was one of three causes: the person who wrote it left. The topics ran out. Or writing took three hours per post, time nobody had any more. Each of these causes needs a different answer: a stand-in and a fixed approval date, a stock of topics for a quarter, or shifting the writing externally, to a copywriter or a system like BlogPilot, which delivers posts and only needs your approval. Which answer fits depends on the cause. The mistake would be to try the same solution again.
Frequently asked questions
Should I just delete all old posts and start fresh?
No, at least not without checking first. Some old posts usually still bring visitors via Google, and deleting them would mean losing exactly those. First check in Search Console which URLs had clicks in the last twelve months, then decide post by post.
Does Google penalise a blog that's been silent for two years?
Google hasn't documented any penalty for pauses. What happens is simpler: without new content, there's nothing new to rank, and outdated posts lose out to more recent pages from other providers. There's also no bonus after the restart, the blog has to earn back what it had.
Do I need to announce the restart?
A post titled "We're back" interests neither Google nor your customers. Start directly with a post on a customer question. If you want to communicate the revival, do it in the newsletter or on LinkedIn, not in the blog itself.
How do I stop the blog going quiet again?
Find out why it went quiet last time, usually a person left or the topics ran out. Build the rhythm so it doesn't depend on one person: a fixed approval date, a stand-in, a stock of topics for a quarter, or a system that delivers.