Links
- Here’s the freshly updated post about Google Analytics alternatives.
- Follow me on Facebook, to get all post updates (and other goodies).
Let me know your thoughts and comments!
Please leave a comment below.
Note that I don’t reply to all comments, but I do read them all. If I don’t reply to your comment, it most likely means that I agree with what you say and don’t have anything meaningful to add, myself. I appreciate and read all comments and your comments play an important part in what I write about, so keep them coming.
Spammy comments are always filtered or removed. No surprise there.
This is a great idea, thanks Shane.
Any thoughts on types of updates that are the best?
For me, the posts that get large amounts of traffic are often reviews or large resource guides (e.g. the one about improving site speed). When I do an update, I make sure than my references are still up to date: links still working, recommended services and tools still available etc. Often, things have changed or been updated, so I change the test accordingly, or change the links where necessary. I also usually have some new things to say. For example, in that speed post, I found some better resources to replace my previous recommendations and I added a new paragraph addressing one of the questions that had come up in the comments.
Post intros are also something I often work on, trying to find a way to make the opening of a post more interesting and attention-grabbing.
I don’t really put a ton of thought into what or how I should update. The work usually does itself, because things change anyway, which makes updates necessary.
Blog updating was very cool. Very helpful and will be something I’ll use.
THank you!
People who are starting out in IM need to be reminded of ways to keep in the forefront. This helps me greatly.
Thanks, Niki, glad you found this helpful!
Hello Shane,
Great relevant tip for me as I just posted old content to the bone yard. I see the value in putting the post back on top, Thanks!
Any chance you could let me know why my Hybrid Connect affiliate link points to my website instead of Hybrid Connect’s sales page?
Any advice for my blog will be appreciated as it’s a mix between Matt Carter and Shane Melaugh.
Fred Tappan
Hi Fred,
Thanks for your comment!
In Hybrid Connect, there’s the “Earn Money with Hybrid” menu item. In there, you can customize your link. Make sure the link you add to that URL field is working.
Clever idea, Shane, and one that I could execute immediately for several of my posts which, day in and day out, get the most of my traffic.
What also caught my attention in this video is your preview of what’s to come on im>impact.
The reason this is interesting is that new bloggers (or in my case, someone planning a blog relaunch) without much content yet on their blogs could have an intro video in the header that both pitches their freemium in exchange for an email opt-in + presents an overview of all the delicious things to come, which of course readers will want to see/read so be sure to opt-in…
You’re a smart, straight shooter, Shane (Paul too) and I’m glad I’m part of your community.
-Joe
I quite like that idea. It puts a twist on just asking for an email, in exchange for “free updates”. You give them a preview of what those free updates entail, which could improve conversions.
Plus, it’s always good to get on video, because it adds that personal element.
Evergreen…. I like that, and your background today looks like you are lying on evergreen GREEN grass and recording in the horizontal position. LOL.
Great tip as always, I assume if you edit post and redate it, that all the comments still follow?
Scott
Yes, that’s correct. Except for the date, nothing about the post itself changes and comments remain.
Thanks, Shane. I assume if the URL to the blog post does not change, that all references to it via Google will now point to the same post without regard to it being sequenced in a new location on your blog?
Yes. That’s one of the things WordPress just takes care of.
Thanks, Shane.
The lighting was a bit uneven. I’m guessing you went outdoors for this shoot to take advantage of some good weather. Next time, you might try a white sheet as a reflector on the side.
I knew about the ability to change dates on a post, but it had not occurred to me to go back and “bump” my old posts. I have a few blogs that might benefit from that. Probably not Amazopia, though. That was is strictly current news aggregation, which isn’t a candidate for “bumping.”
I was too lazy to set up a good lighting, for this one. Running out of time, as well. :)
Hey Shane
Thanks for the info I did not realize changing the date would help traffic, nice!
Thanks for your comment, Wendy!
Well, it’s not guaranteed traffic, but doing this with all your top posts, once a year vs. not doing it at all can make quite a big difference.
Thanks for the post tip – so simple, yet I have completely overlooked it. I am going to check out the rest of your blog as it appears to be a great resource. Thanks.
Thanks, Tony!
I have bumped posts to the top, but sometimes I use the sticky feature.
The sticky feature is good if you have a category getting great organic traffic and you want your best post to be at the very top of all the other category posts.
Cheers
Ian McConnell
Western Australia
Yes, good point. I use both. The “featured post” at the very top is my sticky post.
Hi brother,
Thanks for the thoughts. What tools/sites do you use to check how your site/keywords are doing in Google?
Thanks — Martin
I use Rank Tracker and Traffic Analysis by SwissMadeMarketing. I work with them, so I’m obviously biased towards them, but the tools really are outstanding. :)
Thank you for sharing this original idea with the rest of us. I could always use some fresh traffic to my old posts. I hope you share some of your other traffic tips with us.
Glad you like it, Brett!
I’ll definitely be sharing more like this in the future. :)
Hi Shane,
Thanks for the tip. I have been trying to figure that out for a while. It is real simple when you know how. I always like your tips and will be watching our blog and podcasts.
Rich
Thanks, Richard!
I’m always after other ideas in maintaining and increasing relevancy to my content so good tip, Shane.
I just looked at my Google Analytics for a 6 month period, ending 6 months ago to gain an insight into what searched and landed content proved popular.
There’s probably a few ways to do this but essentially choose a Custom Period in GA, then ‘Traffic Sources’ >> ‘Sources’ >> ‘Search’ (or another option better suited to your thoughts >> Click the Secondary Dimension to get the landing page (in this case, dimension > Traffic Source and Landing Page). Viola.
Shake and mix as need.
Thanks, Martin!
Shane, once again, a really handy tip. Thanks.
Useful tip, thanks Shane.
By the way, I know that you said a while ago you weren’t interested in bringing out ‘me too’ software/plugin versions unless you could improve them significantly…
I’d be interested to know your impression of Chris Munch’s LoveClaw which is being pushed by just about every marketer out there at the moment, but more particularly (as it’s function is closely related to features in WP Sharely and Hybrid Connect), is a similar (but better :) product something you might consider developing?
The graphics in LoveClaw are particularly crummy …and I’m not sure if it’s just Chris Munch marketing BS but he’s saying that the single site version will be $47 a MONTH after the launch …so I believe there’s plenty of room for a competing (better) product in the marketplace.
Maybe the same functionality could be added into WP Sharely to make a great product even better.
Interesting that you ask. I actually had a free plugin similar to this planned, long before LoveClaw came along. It was for twitter only, though.
The free plugin I already had wasn’t really helping my business, so I never moved forward with the project.
Apart from cleaning up the graphics, is there anything else that could be fundamentally improved about the plugin? I’m not sure design alone is interesting enough. What would make me pay attention to this would be if A) there’s some flaw in the process or flow of sharing (like I saw flaws in the way many social share-gates worked) and B) LoveClaw sells well, even beyond the launch hype. The product needs to stand on its own feet, which isn’t a given, with a successful launch. You can sell a lot of pretty much anything if you have enough promotional buzz and “this price is going up!” scarcity.
I don’t see this as a good addition to Sharely, though. One is about bribing for shares, the other is about eliciting an emotional response. I feel that one would dilute the other, if they were combined in one product.
I’ve actually just expanded on this, in a short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At1I4LJCJpc
Someone mentioned above whether the URL changes if you alter the post date. And I wondered this too. I’d been searching about something related to this recently and it was suggested on the WP forum that this can cause a 404 error. I dug a bit more and fond this. Bottom part of their post about the permalinks.
http://make.wordpress.org/support/user-manual/customizing-wordpress/themes/not-found/
Hopefully this is not relevant for some reason that I’ve missed as this is a great option to have in the arsenal for all sorts of reasons :)
Thanks
Lynne
Ah, yes… what I didn’t consider is the use of a permalink structure that includes the publishing date. I always use (and recommend) the “postname” permalink structure, where this problem won’t occur in the first place.
So, if you do have dates in your URLs, either manually change them back to what they were before, after bumping the post, or manually redirect from the old URL to the new one. If you 301 redirect, it should not impact the page’s rankings, either.
Thanks, and good that’s all it is, I was thinking that somehow they were meaning all permalink types could be affected as they didn’t mention it was the dated URL structure.
Many thanks
Lynne
I was just thinking about how to move a post back to the top but I never thought about changing the date. That is so simple but one question I have is; Will that effect the previous comments in anyway? Since the post is saying today’s date but comments came from the past. So will it effect anything behind the scenes?
No, it doesn’t make a difference. The comments will still show the previous date. To anyone who cares to examine it, it won’t make sense since you might have a comment from last year on a post that was published today. But I doubt many people ever even pay attention to that.