How to make your blog look fresh, new and recently updated

This is especially useful for reviewblogs.
Before I go into this I'd like to thank BHW member cyklotrial for providing me with the code for this idea.

A lot of people search the Net looking for a review or a detailed description of a product before they buy.
I have a lot of reviewblogs and what I saw, not surprisingly, is that the older the blogs and the posts the greater the bounce rate on the homepage.
People are looking for fresh reviews about the latest model or the latest revision.
I know I do.
A product might be around for some time but when it still gets raving recent reviews it must be good.

Now you could go into your blogs once in a while and update the dates on the posts and the comments.
Will take you a while if you have 200+ blogs!!!!

So here's a step by step to do it all on autopilot.

TEST THIS 1ST ON A TESTBLOG JUST IN CASE YOUR HOSTING HAS SOME STRANGE SERVER SETTINGS

Step 1 - Make a backup of your Wordpress database

Step 2 - Open this script in notepad and insert your MYSQL database, user and password where it says so

PHP:

<?php
function change_date($date1)
    {
    $date2=strtotime($date1) + (60 * 60 * 24);
    return date("Y-m-d H:i:s",$date2);
    }

$dbuser="INSERT YOUR MYSQL USER NAME HERE";
$dbpass="INSERT YOUR MYSQL USER PASSWORD HERE";
$dbname="INSERT YOUR MYSQL DATABASE NAME HERE";
$handle = mysql_connect("localhost", $dbuser, $dbpass) 
    or die("Connection Failure to Database");
//echo "Connected to database server<br>";
mysql_select_db($dbname, $handle) or die ($dbname . " Database not found." . $dbuser);
//echo "Database " .  $database . " is selected<br><br>";

$query = "SELECT * FROM `wp_posts`";
$run_query = mysql_query($query);

while ($row = mysql_fetch_row($run_query))
    {
    $new_date1=change_date($row[2]);
    $new_date2=change_date($row[3]);
    
    $query = "UPDATE wp_posts SET post_date='$new_date1', post_date_gmt='$new_date2' WHERE ID='$row[0]'";
    
    mysql_query($query )or die("Error");
    } 

$query = "SELECT * FROM `wp_comments`";
$run_query = mysql_query($query);

while ($row = mysql_fetch_row($run_query))
    {
    $new_date1=change_date($row[6]);
    $new_date2=change_date($row[7]);
    
    $query = "UPDATE wp_comments SET comment_date='$new_date1', comment_date_gmt='$new_date2' WHERE comment_ID='$row[0]'";
    
    mysql_query($query )or die("Error");
    } 

mysql_close($handle);
?>

Step 3 - Save the file with any name you like and upload it to your Wordpress directory.

Step 4 - Make a cronjob to execute this script

This script will increase the date for posts and comments in the blogs MYSQL database with a value of your choice.

Lets say someone comes to your blog and sees a post that's 4 days old. Looking good, a fresh review!!!!
You set the script to add 1 day and you run the cronjob every day at midnight.
The next day another visitor comes to your blog and sees the same post and it's still 4 days old.
This post will never age.....

This part of the script on line 4 controls the number of days that is added to the postdate.

$date2=strtotime($date1) + (60 * 60 * 24);

The 3rd number, in this example 24, states the hours that you want to add. So here it adds 24 hours = 1 day.

On my blogs I want most of the returning visitors in the next couple of days to see the same date as on their 1st visit.
So I update the dates once a week.
I run the cronjob once a week and set the hours to 168
$date2=strtotime($date1) + (60 * 60 * 168);

 

With review-style blogs dedicated to one product or

1 long-tail-keyword you have your intro, some basic info

and as the climax-post your pre-sell.

Intro and basic info build up to the pre-sell.

After the pre-sell there's nothing left to say.....except for some fake comments.

 

No, this will not influence your SERPS.

The change is directly in the database and not in the post.
So there's no ping.

Fresh content is always good but when you blow away the competition based on keywords, backlinks etc. you'll still remain high in the SERPS even if the content is old in the eyes of the search engines.

 

Correct.

This trick is only for your visitors who will think they have landed on a blog with fresh content looking at the posting and comment dates.

Doesn't add any value to your indexing or ranking.

 

There are other ways but it can be done with this script.

On line 4 change the + into a -

$date2=strtotime($date1) + (60 * 60 * 24);

becomes

$date2=strtotime($date1) - (60 * 60 * 24);


Just don't let it age 1 month everyday and forget about it......you'll end up with a blog that started on Jan. 1st 1970.........

 

It depends on what impression you want to give with the blog.
And it depends on the product you're promoting.

If you want to make it timeless just edit to remove any timestamp.