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Revamp Your Content: WordPress Rewrite and Republish

Julia McCoy
Thursday, 17th Aug 2023
rewrite and republish

Ever heard of the rewrite and republish feature for WordPress?

No?

It’s like a magic wand for your old, dusty content on WordPress. 🪄

You’ve spent hours crafting that perfect blog post. You hit publish, it gets some traction, but then… nothing. The views dwindle down to a trickle and soon it becomes just another piece in your archives.

A year later, you stumble upon this forgotten masterpiece while doing some routine cleanup. You read through it again – oh boy! It’s not as good as you remember. There are outdated facts, links leading nowhere, and an overall style that makes you cringe slightly. 🙈

This is where the rewrite and republish feature comes into play.

Instead of letting such posts gather digital dust or deleting them out of embarrassment, breathe new life into them by updating information, improving readability, or even giving them a complete makeover.

We can do it in WordPress with the rewrite and republish feature. Let’s learn how.

Table of Contents:

Leveraging the Rewrite & Republish Feature in WordPress: A Detailed Look

As you know, content plays a huge role in growing and scaling a sustainable business.

Imagine a tool that empowers you to maintain your website’s content effortlessly, be it posts, pages, or custom post types. This is precisely what the Rewrite and Republish feature offers WordPress users.

This unique functionality is invaluable for bloggers, business owners, and marketers who understand the power of content marketing. With this republish option at hand, you can immediately start rewriting any existing post without affecting its original version.

This helps ensure you always have fresh content on your site.

The magic happens when, after making all necessary changes to your duplicated draft version, one click on the “republish” button replaces the old with the new while preserving SEO benefits by maintaining the original URL.

Now, isn’t that smart? 🤓

How to Add the Rewrite and Republish Feature to Your WordPress Site

How do you use the rewrite and republish feature?

By default, WordPress doesn’t have a rewrite and republish feature built in.

Instead, you must install and activate the Yoast Duplicate Post plugin to get it on your site.

The plugin also extends support for the rewrite and republish functionality beyond blog posts or web pages to other custom post types.

Deciding whether to update or delete older content can often be challenging. However, with this powerful feature on your site, you can easily turn stale content into fresh current, relevant, and engaging content, all at the click of a button.

Unlocking the Rewrite & Republish Feature

Rewriting and republishing existing posts becomes easy once you’ve installed and activated the Yoast Duplicate Post plugin. All you have to do is go to the posts section in your WordPress dashboard and hover your cursor over the post you want to revamp.

This will give you options for what to do with that post. In this instance, you’ll want to click on the Rewrite and Republish option.

Clicking on the Rewrite and Republish button will create a clone of the original post. You can immediately start rewriting on the cloned version of the post. This won’t affect the content on your original URL.

Once you’re done, you can republish immediately by clicking the Republish button.

Another option is to create a clone of your original post. This creates a draft of your existing post that you can edit and update. However, this option doesn’t come with the republish menu item. You’ll have to copy the revamped version and paste it over your original post or click the Publish button. The latter will result in the updated post being published on a new URL.

Revamp Your Content with the Rewrite and Republish Feature

One of the best things about content marketing and SEO is that the initial efforts you put into creating content will pay off for years to come. That’s especially true if you keep your content fresh and up to date, something the Rewrite and Republish feature can help you

Here are a few benefits of using this feature:

Updating Content with Ease

The Rewrite & Republish feature is the busy entrepreneur’s best friend when it comes to maintaining fresh and relevant content. It provides the ability to immediately start rewriting outdated information, enhancing readability in the process.

It also makes it easy to combat content decay, a gradual decrease in organic performance. This is usually a result of newer and better content than yours being published by competitors.

The “freshness factor” is a critical ingredient to helping ensure your content continues to rank well, and the Rewrite and Republish function can help you do that.

Dealing with Outdated Information

In our digital age where trends change at lightning speed, ensuring your site’s content stays current can be a daunting task. A viable strategy would involve routinely scanning through posts for data or references that may have become obsolete over time.

If you find details no longer pertinent or accurate, don’t hesitate. Replace them swiftly with updated facts or eliminate them entirely. Remember: your objective should be to ensure your content remains current and enhance trustworthiness and optimize SEO performance in the process.

One of the biggest dangers of having outdated content is that it won’t meet search intent. This can lead to a decrease in rankings. 📉

Once you’ve made the necessary changes to your content, you can put the Yoast Duplicate Post plugin into action – hit that republish button without hesitation.

Your existing post will be overwritten by this duplicated version immediately while preserving its original URL – offering continuity of user experience and retaining hard-earned SEO value simultaneously.

Comparing Old and New Versions: A Key to Quality Content

The Rewrite & Republish feature takes content management up a notch by allowing you to compare the old and new versions of your posts or pages. This is crucial in maintaining accuracy, quality control, and ensuring that no outdated information slips through.

Tracking all the changes you’ve made in your duplicated version is super easy. Simply click on the Republish button then, on the window that opens, select “Save changes and compare”.

This will open WordPress’s revision history showing you the two versions of your content.

Rewrite and Republish: Keeping Your Content Fresh and Relevant

Unleashing the power of the Rewrite and Republish feature can transform your old WordPress content into fresh, engaging masterpieces.

This ensures that the investment you put in crafting the original post continues to pay off handsomely.

Besides keeping your content fresh, this feature allows you to update outdated information, improve readability, and enhance the overall user experience.

The steps are simple – access the tool through the Yoast Duplicate Post plugin or directly from the post edit screen. Make necessary changes without affecting the original post, and once done, click the Republish button.

If you are using BrandWell to create blog posts, rewriting and republishing is even easier. No need to log in to your WordPress back end. Just go to your BrandWell dashboard, search for the article you want to update, and click the “Content Brief” button on the “Research” tab.

brandwell content rewrite

Here you’ll have the option to change the word count range and even add context to guide the AI in rewriting your old content.

Click “Rewrite Content” and you’ll have a freshly written blog article in no time — complete with the latest information from what’s currently ranking for your topic in Google.

brandwell rewrite post

You have control over every aspect – you can save a copy of your old article before rewriting it so you can compare both versions before finalizing updates and scheduling the republish date and time for maximum impact.

It’s all in your hands!

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Written by Julia McCoy

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