Don’t link to your old posts!
Are you hearing it right or Am I saying it correctly? Answer to both the question is “YES”. Every where you have heard about linking to your old posts and I am asking to do just opposite.
Even if you have read 31dbbb than there is one day (Day 8 ) dedicated to interlinking activity.
Then why I am saying we should not link to our old posts?
To answer this I have another question; Why would we link our old posts?
- Give users a chance to find what they are looking for – Most of time we end up at a place which offers information but not exactly what we are looking for, if related posts are linked then there is a chance of finding the relevant information.
- To decrease bounce rate – This will help in increasing the page views and readability of our blog.
- To show users what other things you offer – Sometime it’s not only related posts, you can show unrelated or the topics which you serve on your blog.
But what happens if the your old post is a dead one?
Image Credit: wandee007
What is a dead post – it’s a post which is not useful to anyone anymore.
Every post has a lifetime like us humans, it’s just that lifetime that post is useful after that it’s a dead post. So do you want to link to your dead posts?
Here is what I am saying,
Don’t link to your old posts, link to your live posts.
Now the question becomes how to judge if the post is live? – who can answer this better than you.
Currently I run two blogs Blogs4android and Makewebworld, both of them are different in nature. On Blogs4android my posts mostly relate to latest handsets, offers, review etc. Lifespan of posts varies from few days to few weeks (some goes to few months/years also). While on Makewebworld posts are of longer time spans usually 0-3 years.
Here are the extra steps in the linking process to consider the lifespan of posts.
While creating the post we need to make a conscious effort to predict its lifetime. I know it’s hard because:
- As a writer we want our posts to last for life. (I can understand that emotion I am feeling the same for this post).
- Sometime topic is as such which can’t allow you to predict.
But once you make a practice of giving lifetime to a post, it becomes easy. Think practically, with the changing technologies and environment it is very rare to create a post to last decades, even a year is hard.
Here is how I do it. I have a sheet where I always note down 3 things title of post, Published Date and Lifetime of the post. While linking I always take a look at that sheet to check if it is still live.
You can change the lifespan later on if you feel that post is still relevant, but make a judgment if it is really required.
You can use this data for checking the health of your blog also; my sheet gives me an indication on how many live posts I have on my blog at that point of time and prediction for the future. So it helps me in planning.
So let’s do an exercise, after completing this post I have given it a lifespan of 6 months. 3 months to blossom and 3 months to fallout. What do you say am I being generous?
Reference:
31dbbb – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog is an ebook from Darren Rowse from Problogger. He is one of leading problogger and works towards making it easy for all other bloggers.
You’ve got a point there, but most bloggers choose to interlink their old post with new post so they could drive more readers to their old post. It’s precisely the best way to let other know that there are some older posts that might be useful for them.
Yes and it is good too, but this needs to be done with keeping readers benefit in mind. We need to drive them to the pages which is useful for them.
Yeah! Directing them to more useful resources would be very helpful for us to get their trust. Who knows, we might maintain them as recurring visitors of our blogs.
Excellent post. You had me worried in the beginning so I’m glad I read right to the end. Just recently I got a tip for onpage SEO that was to link to your home page and to one or two related posts because it would improve rankings. It seems to work because I have posts ranking for sites that have very little off page SEO. Fortunately the sites are fairly new so oldest posts are within last 4-6 months but I’ve noted your helpful advice and will take care with linking choices in future. Just subscribed to your list so look forward to more sound advice. Happy New Year.
Thanks Jonathon for liking the post. I have faced this situation before as I have few blogs where I share deals etc. Posts gets old very fast in those blogs and it will not be viable to send readers there. So I wrote this.
It was actually my first time to hear this thought. Most bloggers I know recommend to link old posts to other blogs. Why? To help readers know more about their research. For that moment alone, readers are looking after of that topic so presenting more related topics about it would be very useful to them.
Yes It does help readers to know about the related contents and we should do it. My point is that related content should be valuable also. Just for the sake on one extra page view we should not send our reader to an page which doesn’t contain any value as of today.
Ah yes of course. We really need to direct our readers to those posts that could actually help them in their online activities. It is important that we really need to focus on them rather than for our own benefit.
many other seo experts said that we also need to make links for older material and in general other pages and not only the main page of our site
Hmmm. I don’t know if I agree with you here across the board. I may tend to agree when it comes to blogging and Internet sites. However, the site linked with my name above is a relationship and personal-development blog. I think that the things I wrote 4 years ago are still alive, vital and applicable to today.
Surely, those things don’t change? What do you think?
That means life for your post is much higher..:)
I do agree that there are some stuff which can be long lasting..and personality development is one of the topic. But I would only say that the change process for it very slow.
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