Should You Add Dates to Your Blog Posts?

As a full-time guest blogger, I have done quite a bit of research finding new blogs and finding resources for my article, and there is one thing that always bothers me: the date. Some blogs show the date on posts, but others seem to hide the date. As a researcher, hiding the date is extremely annoying because I never really and truly know if an article is still relevant. As a blog owner, hiding the date is a little bit more appealing because it keep my older articles appealing. This led me to wonder: Is it better to leave the date on the blog posts or off?

Reasons to Keep the Date Visible

Most bloggers leave the date visible on blog posts for the convenience of readers. A date on a blog posts lets readers know whether or not “breaking news” is actually breaking. In other words, it keeps your entire blog honest. There is no guessing and no confusion when it comes to information found on your blog; and readers like that. It allows readers to make an informed decision about whether or not they want to use the information found in an article.

Many bloggers also feel comfortable adding the dates to blog posts because his/her blog offers a lot of timeless, or evergreen, content. If this is the case, no reader is going to care if the content was written yesterday or three years ago. Putting the dates on these blog posts will help show that you have nothing to hide even if it wouldn’t have mattered in the first place.

Reasons Why the Date Might Be Better Left a Mystery

Sometimes WordPress themes make it difficult because they are automatically setup to not show the date. In most cases, these themes make it hard to figure out a way to show the date. If a blog is full of content that will not become outdated, then it may not be worth the time to figure out if your blog needs dates.

Some bloggers also leave the date off of blog posts because they are concerned that it will scare readers away—timeless content or not. If someone is browsing around the Internet looking for information, he/she is of course going to go with the more relevant content. This is especially true if the date does matter on the content. For this reason, the blogs full of outdated content will get passed up, so blog owners sometimes hide the date to avoid this fate.

The Verdict

As always, it’s up to the blog owner. I personally feel that there should always be a date on a blog post so that a reader can make the decision on his/her own. If your blog has a lot of old and outdated content, time is better spent creating new content than figuring out how to hide the dates on all of your posts.

Do you ever pay attention to the dates on blog posts? Do you think it’s best to show them, hide them, or does it not matter?

Photo Credit: scribendi.com

About the Author: Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to credit card processing. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including phone systems to small businesses and entrepreneurs for the leading business directory, Business.com.

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3 Ways to Please and Win the Trust of a Skeptic Client

After money, clients are the hardest things to come by, really. And it’s easy to lose a client, when they notice you are not the right person for them. And gaining a ruined reputation back is not an easy task. Many bloggers always find it sad how clients might become complex to handle, but you have to agree it’s not their fault. They worked hard for the money they are going to spend on you, and would ensure they see results in what they are spending their money on. And if you can’t make them see that result they want in you, then you should be ready to lose them for another contractor.

I’ve worked with various clients, from low paying gigs to high paying companies, and I’ve been able to learn a few things from my experience working with several clients. So, I’ll be sharing some ways I’ve learned to please my clients in this blog post, especially those ones that are very skeptical.

Show that you know what you are hired for

More than anything, clients want to know that you actually know what you are hired and paid to do. Any little mistake can cause a lot of trouble. It’s just like an egg, once it’s on the floor that’s the end!

In order to please your client you have to make him/her feel secure working with you. And that security can be gained by showing them, and not telling them, that you know what you are hired to do. After all, no one would go ahead to hire and pay someone who knows next to nothing about what they want them to do.

If you want to fix your car, for instance, and the guy that called himself a mechanic is asking you dumb questions like “how do you start your car” or “where do you locate the alternator”, won’t you take to your heels?

It’s that simple, really.

Be Truthful

Honesty is another great factor that can sustain the relationship between a contractor and a skeptical client. Already your client is skeptical about working with you, and then you are not being honest with her, you are only plunging yourself into a deeper hole.

If you don’t know about something, open up and be truthful with your client. It won’t hurt you, it will only go a long way to show how interested you are in seeing your client succeed, and they will love you for this.

And if eventually, because you opened up that you don’t know a particular job, you lost a deal with them, when they have another job they think you can handle, you’ll be the first person on their list.

Always Welcome Suggestions

Be open to suggestions and be flexible. Perhaps your client is a veteran at what he’s hiring you to do for him, but due to his tight schedule he has to hire you, when he gives you advices on how to do things, welcome it and try it out. Don’t just respond with an immediate “that won’t work”, if you strongly believe it cannot go that way, just try it out and see the outcomes. This will give your client the impression that you are open for suggestions and would be a lot easier to work with!

Conclusion

If you take the points in this blog post and apply it to your career, you will be able to impress that skeptical client and even impress potential ones too.

About the author: This guest post is written by John. John is a content developer for www.opendoorloan.co.uk

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4 Ways to Build a Successful Blogging Career

This Post has been Removed as per the Author's Request.

About the author: This guest post is written by Joseph. Joseph is a blogger for www.opendoorloan.co.uk

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Four Wrong SEO Tactics You Don’t Want Google Penalizing You For

What most bloggers are quickly able to jump at is an opportunity to gain a backlink on any blog. While building backlinks can help you to significantly improve the rankings of your blog/website, there are ways it can get you penalized on Google. The aftermath of getting penalized on Google might result in your blog completely losing its rankings on the search engine result pages (SERPs) or similarly a total loss of your Google PageRank, like what happened to Mashable recently.

People that are found guilty of some SEO offences and are being penalized by Google are not only those that are in the practice of black hat SEO. In fact, some are the completely innocent and naïve internet marketers who jump at every opportunity to get a backlink.

In this blog post, I’ve prepared some SEO tactics you don’t want to get penalized on Google for and I hope they serve as a guide on your way to a successful internet marketing career.

Buying Backlinks

Buying backlinks is one of the most prominent ways big companies build backlinks to their blogs and websites, rather than get them the natural ways that appease Google.

Some notable media sites have been notoriously punished by Google for selling and buying link juices from other websites. The consequence of this is a massive loss in Google search traffic and loss of relevancy on Google’s algorithm rankings.

Linking to Panda Affected Sites

Before you link to a site that has been hit by the Google algorithm bot called “Panda”, you want to make sure the site has recovered from its “panda slap” shock before giving a link back to it. Doing otherwise, you risk letting the same thing happen to the site you are linking from.

I’ve seen first-hand what sites that tried this experienced and how they toiled the vast search engine land before they were able to recover from it.

Getting Links from a Poor Quality Site

Another SEO tactic that can hurt your site is pursuing to get backlinks from poor quality and thin sites. Blogs that have low quality content and shares too many links would pass a bad ranking to your site, which will hurt the rankings of your blog on Google.

Building a solid SEO foundation for your blog requires hard work from you, and Google expects nothing less. Pitching and writing for a blog that requires little effort from you will only get you on Google’s black book record.

Conclusion

What matters most is avoiding what will get you Google’s attention. But sincerely, many bloggers don’t know these things and it’s important you find them out and avoid doing them, after then will you be able to scale up your search rankings on Google.

Also Read:

1.  Google SEO Ranking Factors
2.  Amateur Blogs and Blogging for profit
3.  20 Things to improve your blogs usability

About the author: This guest post is written by Ayo. Ayo is a blogger who writes SEO articles for SEO doctor.

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20 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Blog’s Usability

Your blog’s usability – how would you define it? Would it be the ease with which your site operates, or would it be the ease of use of your product? Here’s how we define it; everything that works towards reducing your visitor’s frustration and helps enhance their overall experience is an example of good usability.

1. Take An Objective Look At Your Blog

Keep the following questions in mind: Does anything distract you from the content? Is there too much information, or too little? Do your pages feel overwhelming? Would you enjoy reading your posts again?

2. If It Isn’t Life Or Death, Eliminate It

Too many navigational links everywhere? Too Many Ads? Perhaps your sign-on form has too many fields? Chop everything you absolutely don’t need.

3. Make Your Content Clear And Legible

Don’t fill your content with unnecessary smileys, a string of hyphens, and other abbreviated animation characters or even tiny images every few lines. This only distracts the reader from the actual content.

4. Optimize White Space

Separate your content from the sidebar and navigation aspects using white space. Make sure there’s enough white space between, before and after lines, paragraphs, posts, lists, comments, page margins and so on.

5. Fine Tune Your Template

Scan your template for annoying negative contrasts such as black and white, even if you have it in small areas just for interest. Negative contrasts are extremely reader-unfriendly. Keep text black and the background light.

6. Categorize Content

Create categories for your content, so that users can easily navigate to the ones they want to read. Keep categories to a minimum and don’t define a category for less than 5 posts.

7. Use Keywords To Label Categories

Any user should understand your blog’s purpose just by reading your post categories. Use keywords from your niche to create category names, based on your SEO keyword research.

8. Add A Good Search Feature

It always helps to have a good search feature on your blog so that users, both old and new, can locate the content they want. Keep your search institutive and configure it with the right keyword combinations.

9. Include A Popular Posts Widget

New users find it very user-friendly when they’re presented with a list of popular posts. Keep the widget in your sidebar; base the recommended posts on your analytics results and not on a plugin algorithm.

10. Link Old Content To New

At the bottom of each new post, post links to older, related content that the user may like to read. This will ensure that users don’t need to go around searching for similar content.

11. Keep The Navigation Steady

Make sure that your navigation does not change as you keep adding new content. Write down how you want it to be and test your navigation now and then for conformance.

12. Keep Load Speeds High

Did you know that if there’s even a 0.5 seconds delay in your page-load time, you’re likely to lose 20% of your traffic? Drop whichever flashy feature is slowing your site down and focus on keeping your speed high.

13. Identify And Build Focus Around Target Audience

Once you know which niche you want to blog in, narrow the large audience scope to your focus target audience. Trying to serve too many audiences will cause confusion and mistrust among readers.

14. Modify Your Content Display

Use your Google Analytics data to check your average visitor’s preferred screen resolution. Design your user display size accordingly. For example, if 80% of your users use 1000px resolution, use that.

15. Check Your Site For Colorblind Compliance

Use Vischeck to find out what colors colorblind people see when they visit your blog. Are your regular colors appearing haphazard? Is your content clear to read? Modify your display colors after this study.

16. Keep Backgrounds Clean

If you must use background images for your content, make sure the text is still darker than the background image. Distracting background images reduce your site’s usability.

17. Keep Columns Narrow

If you’re presenting text or stats in columns, keep them narrow so that the visitor’s eye doesn’t have to travel too far across the page. Keep your columnar line length between 60 to 80 characters across browsers and screen resolutions.

18. Use Clean Fonts

Your fonts must be strong and easy to read, such as fonts from the sans-serif family - Courier New, Helvetica, Calibri and Times New Roman. Stick to a size 12 for best readability.

19. Ensure Browser Compatibility

Test your blog on multiple browsers – IE, Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and a few others. Check that your web design works the same way on all the browsers. Remember users will leave your site if it doesn’t load well on their favorite browser.

20. Fix Broken Links

Nothing can be more frustrating than to click a link and find an error at the end of it. Use a tool such as LinkFixerPlus or LinkChecker to locate and fix broken links.

Also Read:
1. How to attract traffic to your blog
2. How to make money by your Blogs

About the author: Written by Raj for conversion rate optimization company Invesp . Invesp was founded in 2006 and helped more than 200 companies in optimizing their landing pages design and increasing conversion rate of their campaigns.

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