8 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
8 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

Does Bumping Your Blog Posts Help You or Hurt You?

by Jared Alberghini
6 replies
I find from time to time I want to re-organize some of my blog posts, and what I do is simply change the post date which bumps the post to the top, or wherever I want it.

I know it does what I am trying to acomplish, by bringing an old post back to the top, but my question is, does this help or hurt?

I had two thoughts on this, the first being that Google should theoretically view this as a new page (as long as you have permalinks setup with dates in the url) since it will be a new date in the url: 2009/03/etc... so is this viewed as fresh new content?

The second thought I had was that you are left with a 404 page not found if you have any backlinks/se indexed/etc. for the previous url with the old date...

So, what are your thoughts on this?

Jared
#blog #bumping #hurt #posts
  • Profile picture of the author Ken Strong
    Well, if you're using Wordpress, here's a plugin that lets you set up permanent redirects if you move a post -- haven't tried it myself, but looks like that would take care of your 404 error problems, and you wouldn't lose any backlinks/SEO...

    WordPress Plugin for Permanent Redirection of Posts - Angsuman's Permanent Redirector Plugin

    As for moving posts around, I've done that myself... I guess it partly depends on whether you have a large and loyal regular readership, as they would be more likely to remember seeing that post before and wonder what the deal is... not sure about that question.
    Signature
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[581363].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author theyoungmarketer
      Banned
      [DELETED]
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[581365].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author Gail_Curran
        [DELETED]
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[581482].message }}
        • Profile picture of the author Jared Alberghini
          Originally Posted by Gail_Curran View Post

          Why don't you just copy the post and repost it as a new blog entry?
          Because by doing that it would make it duplicate content on your own site...
          which I have understood is a no-no.
          Signature

          P.S.

          Join The Future: Telekinetic Marketing

          {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[581566].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Matt Bard
    Hey Jared,

    I tried this with one of mine and all I did was to go and change the dates of a few posts to bring them up.

    I got the initial listing in the normal time it takes when you post naturally but then after a day the rank dropped and I thought it was a mistake but then after another short period of time (14 hrs ?) it went back to the listing it had before the drop.

    I tried it again a few weeks later with a different post on the same blog and got the same results.

    I then tried it with another blog and after the initial drop it did not go back up. After a few days (week and a half) I changed the dates back and the blog went back to it's original position.

    Am still analyzing and trying to figure it out. I don't know yet what this means.

    This might not answer your question but thought I would add my experiences so far.

    Matt
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[581477].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author testaccount9998
    I would be very interested to see if anyone else has a take on this or experience.

    because I have been using the Old Post Promoter plugin on one of my affiliate product blogs. my permalink structure is static (no dates) so do you guys think this will hurt my pages overall in google rankings?
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[581507].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author eddycole
    The thing about changing the date of the post if you have date based permalinks is, the url has changed and if googlebot or a reader tries to access the old url, it'll get a 404 error or page because the post is no longer at that url.

    You could do as others in the thread have suggested and use a plugin to rewrite the url, or why not just update the original and sticky it to the top of your blog for a while, or better yet, do a new post and link to the modified one. By using in-content links pointing to internal pages on your site you're helping both your visitors and search engines to read/crawl the newly revised content.

    ed
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[581530].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Jared Alberghini
      Originally Posted by eddycole View Post

      or better yet, do a new post and link to the modified one. By using in-content links pointing to internal pages on your site you're helping both your visitors and search engines to read/crawl the newly revised content.
      Ed, thanks, that's just what I was looking for... nice simple solution, and the in-content links idea is spot on... thanks so much for reminding me about that.

      Jared
      Signature

      P.S.

      Join The Future: Telekinetic Marketing

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[581556].message }}

Trending Topics