TheTK
Registered Member
- Aug 12, 2013
- 58
- 94
As a long time lurking web dev whose been doing ok making money online I decided to start blogging about my journey and giving back to the community! Here's my first major post, with methods, code snippets and even a free plugin!
Hope you enjoy ~TKI doubt you've not seen the outcry that popular SEO hype bloggers have been throwing out there when it comes to how Google's algorithm is responding to freshness. They'll bitch and they'll moan and say things like:
and to be fair they aren't wrong. The problem is they'll complain a bit more and rather than give you any methods to do anything about it they simply try and sell you on their SEO course.
So now I'm going to show you some of the various methods for playing around with WordPress post dates so that you can take advantage of Google's over the top love of freshness!
But before we dive on in make sure you've disabled your "post date" under the Wordpress > Permalinks like so:
By doing this you ensure that you can send new article publishing dates without getting busted by Google and or having a messed up RSS feed!
This method is specifically handy for when you are looking to make content seem like it was posted today; and while this is ok for search engines it's especially powerful when advertising things to people as they like to think they are getting the latest information, the latest software etc. So this is great to use on your affiliate pages!
Code:
?<?php the_time(?F jS, Y?) ?>?It's worth noting that not all themes use the same functions or put them in the same place. You may have to poke around a bit to find yours!
From there open your "Functions.php" under your wordpress editor and add in the following code:
Code:
// Sunday, September 1st, 2013
function displaydate(){
return date(?l, F jS, Y?);
}
add_shortcode(?date?, ?displaydate?);
// end date
Now we're gona take a look at two plugins that can help you do the same thing, but are much better targeted at search engines than anything else. It's methods like these that you'll use to have your posts always appear fresh:
The first plugin was an offer priced WSO that allows you to display the dynamic date of your content with the following features:
But rather than make you pay for that plugin, I went ahead and bought a copy to share with you!
http://tkseo.co/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Dynamic-Date-Plugin-DD-MM-YYYY-Format.zip - Note, not my plugin original WSO is http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special-offers-forum/81140-wordpress-dynamic-date-plugin-great-one-time-offers-squeeze-pages-landing-pages-more.html
and you can find the instructions http://wp-internetmarketing.com/how-to-use-the-wordpress-dynamic-date-plugin/
I would use this plugin when you are running a blog and want to keep things in order for your regular readers, but want to have the search engines and traffic that comes in from SEO think that everything is new!
This next method is also a plugin (and an awesome open source one) that I highly recommend. It's called http://www.blogtrafficexchange.com/old-post-promoter/ and it was made by the guys at BlogExchange.
The difference between 'Old Post Promoter" and "Dynamic Date Plugin" is that Old Post Promoter doesn't just change the date of the piece it actually bumps it back to the top of your blog by re-publishing it and sends the new post back to your Wordpress RSS feed.
As the post appears back at the top of your blog, you can see why this method would be a little chaotic for anyone who ran an actually blog. But if it's just for SEO promotion then Old Post Promoter is the way to go!
Obviously there are about 1000 different ways to make money with these methods, and most of you will just be applying them to existing money sites. However I'm going to quickly outline a favourite of mine that I call "Youtube Date Push"
The Youtube date push is a simple concept pick a niche with good affiliate potential (for example I used to do it for hosting reviews), and create a number of videos for that review. I'd create 20 - 30 of them each targeting different keywords and phrases. Write up an accompanying blog post, embed the youtube video (bonus: turn on adsense for youtube) and then set up Old Post Promoter to cycle through the various posts bumping them every so often.
Be sure to install http://wordpress.org/plugins/xml-sitemaps-for-videos/ and run it frequently. Also as long as you turned off dates in your permalink settings you can continue to build backlinks to those pages as even when OPP bumps it the URL will stay the same.
While it's much easier to do with Wordpress there are certainly ways that you can hack dynamic dates without using a CMS platform. Yet they won't be picked up as well by the Search Engines.
One thing that does work on occasion is if you've already set up "Google Verified Authorship" you'll know you have to put in a "By" line that says who the author of each page is. Underneath that you can put:
Code:
?Posted On: <?php echo date('l jS F Y'); ?>?(and as long as you are using PHP) then today's server date should automatically load. While this won't have the same effect as OPP when Google re-crawls your site it will often grab that date as it grabs the byline.
