Blogging Advice and Tips: My Pain, Your Gain: Newbie bloggers should always try to benefit from the blogging experiences of others. That's what I did! How often do you update your blog content?
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.
