Once
upon a time, a long long time ago (or at least it sure feels that
way) … I learned that great sites DIE! Many of the online writing
communities that approve me as a contributor no longer exist.
Fortunately, I saved backup copies of my work and simply republished
the content elsewhere. Wonderful platforms like Medium.com accept
both original and republished writing. Whew! That's a relief! Even
so, because of my prior experience, I don't put all of my apples in
one basket. That means that I know one morning I might wake up and
find that Medium has disappeared. Hey! It could happen! But I hope
it won't.
Meanwhile,
after trying out different blogging platforms (Blogspot, WordPress,
Tumblr, Wix, Webs, etc.), I finaly settled on using the Blogger (or
Blogspot) platform for publishing my stand-alone blogs. WHY?
Blogger is owned by Google and my blogs were approved for Google Ad
Sense. The whole purpose for blogging is to monetize my content and
earn supplemental income. Because I used the free plan instead of
paid services, the other blogging platforms did not make it easy for
me to monetize my content. Blogger was super simple and the regular
send me eMails when they make significant changes as to how they
place ads on your site, etc.
August
20, 2024, Google sent an eMail about “New ad intent chips format:
Automatic enrollment ...” I am not really a tech savvy person. So
when I get these kinds of messages all I want to know if: Do I have
to do anything? Fortunately, Google uses says no action is required
because of their commitment to “seamless transition”. And when I
read those words, a hallelujah chorus followed and I start doing the
happy dance in my seat. LOL.
Anyway!
Enough of my babbling. Currently I am publishing six blogs that
have been approved for Ad Sense. Getting traffic to the blogs is not
a walk in the park and it gets worst when Google does these
“updates”. There's no point whining or complaining about the
traffic fluctuations because when Google moves you just have to
follow along. That's why, I persevere. How
Google's Algorithm Updates Affect Your Website's Traffic | LinkedIn
If
I were to give advice and tips to newbie bloggers I would tell them
to one thing they must always remember: Your blog posts are NOT
written in stone. That means you need to constantly revisit your
content, check for broken links, check for outdated information, etc.
Review,
revise, and even re-purpose your blog posts. Repurpose? You may
have initially written the post to cover one topic but so much
changed you had to discuss another topic. In other words: That was
THEN; This is Now. Another reason I like the Blogger platform is
that after my posts have been refreshed, I can re-date them. That's
right. Change the date, especially of your changes were significant,
so that when visitors drop by they will see current content. If you
change the date of a previously published, before hitting the publish
button with the new date, check the Permalink. This is the URL that
is automatically generated. Depending on the type of template you
use, check to see if there is a “Title Link”. If there is, then
copy and paste the Permalink into the blank space, then hit publish.
Your old URL (i.e. the Permalink) has likely been indexed by the
search engines. By attaching that link to your title, when the the
search engine crawls, it will pick up the same URL linked to content
your updated and redated. Website
Crawling: The What, Why & How To Optimize | Search Engine Journal
Since
you realize that your have to continuously revisit your content, you
might ask: How often must my blog content be updated?
(That's what I asked.)
Once
upon a time, a long long time ago (or at least it sure feels that
way) … I learned that great social media communities DIE! Do you
remember Google Plus? I thought the platform would upend Facebook
and they probably thought so too. But that didn't happen so they
scrapped the project. But when it was active, I used to follow Mike
Allton, a blogging and social media expert.
He said bloggers should update and/or recycle or "revive"
their content regularly, and recommended that you "... invest
your time in past posts that you have actual reason and evidence to
support the renewed interest." Besides that, links get outdated
and it affects your rankings in the search engine. Bad links = Poor
quality content. That makes sense!
Another
cool feature of Blogspot? When you go into the dashboard to view
your listing of posts, some numbers represent the view
count. Isn't that awesome? At a glance you can tell that one post
was viewed 10 times while another may have viewed 100 times. So
which post would you pick to “revive”. Likely the one that seems
to be “surviving”, i.e. the one with the most views. This is not
always the case. View count is a good rule of thumb. But not a fast
and hard rule.
EXAMPLE:
Some of my posts date back to 2014. That's 10 years. Some of the
information is useless now, even if it shows the post had 1000 views.
The content may be time-sensitive, i.e. it was a hot topic THEN, but
it isn't NOW. So don't bother making changes. But if your content
is “evergreen”, i.e. NOT time-sensitive, that means that
something you wrote a decade ago, might still be relevant today.
You
should always take heed to good advice. Mr. Allton offered good
advice, so I took heed. If you're a newbie blogger, so should you.
In fact, here is a link to an article published by Mr. Allton in 2014
and most of it is still applicable today. How
To Revive Old Blog Content | Blogging Brute
Thanks
for reading.
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