Softly, Softly, Sneaky Monkey – Pre Dating Blog Post Entries
Pre dating your blog posts is rather simple, basically, you set the date of a post your are publishing to a date that will bury your post in your blog archive. Why? Well the idea of having a pre dated post would be to get content onto your site that may be considered less desirable to your core readers, but some how still useful to your blog as a whole. Before I go too far here, I want to state that I have never done this, and have no plans to do it in the immediate future, however, I do see some merits in the idea, which is why I think it is worthy of a post.
Some situations where predating your posts may be a useful idea:
People who use search engines can’t spell
There is large growth on the Internet based around the idea that people can’t spell. There are sites to catch last minute auctions where titles have been misspelt. There are sites that list commonly misspelled words also. So why not create the odd post that captures certain commonly misspelt words or terms, then bury that post in your archive so as not to embarrass yourself in front of your core readers, you don’t want them to think you can’t spell of course. It may bring you some extra search engine traffic.
Hiding Paid Reviews
I would have said this would be a great way to hide paid review posts. Paid reviews are just a way for a blogger to make a few bucks and are almost always not relevant to your readers. So why not get the cash then hide the evidence? Well I read today that bloggers have been denied their dosh for doing this. So this is probably not a good idea.
Unrelated Topics
If there was a situation where you wanted an article posted on your blog, but you didn’t want you core readers to see it because it was unrelated to the core content of your blog, pre dating may solve this problem.
Issues
The whole idea of pre dating posts relies on the idea that your blog archive should be a hiding place. I think your archive should be an asset. If old posts sit on your site unread and unutilized, then maybe you should consider promoting your old posts or archives more.
Conclusion
This is an interesting idea and it may be useful for some bloggers in some situations. But I would use it with caution.
Tags: Tips
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Comments (7)
I’ve never even considered that. I would have to agree with you that if there is a safe “hiding place” anywhere on your blog, you’ve got work to do…with that, I’m off to go rework and promote my archives
Same here! I would have never stopped to think of pre dating posts. Thanks for the heads up!
I believe you can set wordpress to publish posts at specified intervals or dates.
I do agree with you guys.
Great tips. I know Google is good about getting you the right stuff for misspellings so it is clear that it happens a lot.
Totally late to this party, but I have a question/comment. If you’ve built a site around something that’s time-sensitive, and you want to update the site to have all the information going forward, wouldn’t it be a good idea to predate posts so that they fit the general timeline?
And then, there’s another situation I believe can benefit from predating posts. I have a site about a television show I happen to adore, but I started the site at the end of the show’s run. I’m thinking of going back and putting my thoughts about the episodes into posts (this is purely a fan enterprise here — just doing it for the love of the show) and then predating those posts to the original air date of the show, to keep from cluttering up the current info.
Is this deceptive, or just a good use of predating material to keep it off the front pages and in its relevant place?
Good idea Simon! I appreciate you posting this one. Thanks for the helpful information.