Enter your email address. Sign Up. Lireo Designs Durham Canton, MI Phone: How current is the information? Is it worth reading? Another bonus: including a date on the post adds trust. My Expectations For my weekly resources roundup posts , I search the web for recent articles about web design and development.

addthedate — Deborah Edwards-Onoro redcrew July 11, I wrote the first version of this post in March Or that adding a date clutters the look of their site layout. One of the most read posts on this blog was written in And it has a date. Did I miss the information? You can get an idea of when the post was written by looking at the dates on the comments.

Her comments: As a journalist, I would never publish a story without the date. Your Opinion? Why make your reader wonder when a post was published or if it contains up-to-date information? Do you think adding dates lends more trust to your blog? Originally published on March 5, Share this: Click to share on Twitter Opens in new window Click to share on Facebook Opens in new window Click to email a link to a friend Opens in new window Click to print Opens in new window.

Like this: Like Loading About the Author Deborah Edwards-Oñoro provides small businesses, consultants, nonprofits, and higher ed with creative and distinctive websites. As organizer of Refresh Detroit , West Metro Detroit WordPress , and Metro Detroit WordPress , she encourages members to share their knowledge and experiences.

In her free time, you'll find her birding, shooting photos, reading, or watching tennis. Hi Claire, Thank you for your comment. Get New Posts by Email Enter your email address to get notified of new posts. Join 1, other subscribers. Recent Posts September 16, Weekly Roundup of Web Design and Development Resources TEDxDetroit Returns October 26, Accessibility and Inclusive Design Meetup Groups. Contact Lireo Designs Durham Canton, MI Phone: Lireo Designs on Twitter LinkedIn.

Privacy Policy Accessibility Statement. Some of them have dates and some of them don't. I can tell you right now, though, that if a post is older than years, I'm probably going to give it a little less credit, though a lot depends on the context. Let's say I'm researching a historical topic. If I wanted to write about the immediate after-effects of Google Panda, I might specifically look for posts published in late and , after the algorithm hit.

I could also look for more modern posts that other people have written on the same topic, to see what sources they found. On the other hand, if I'm writing something about, say, Google's modern focus on E-A-T scores , I'd rather find a post from than one from The internet is a place of constant change, and online marketing is where much of that change is centered and focused.

Google changes affect a lot of how we do things, so we need the most up to date information about those changes to be able to make decisions. If I'm giving you advice based on knowledge from , are you going to trust me? I could be wrong because things have changed since then. This is only a problem if there's competition for your content.

If you're the only content out there on a given subject, it doesn't really matter how old your content is, people have to refer to you or do their own legwork. Then again, with tens of millions of blog posts published every month , there's almost definitely going to be competition. One of the best techniques you can use for content marketing is creating skyscraper content also known as pillar or flagship content. They're all terms for the same thing: a single huge piece of content that draws in a ton of attention and exists as a timeless, constantly-updated piece of content.

One of my favorite examples of this is Brian Dean's of Backlinko fame complete list of Google search ranking factors. It's a huge and excellent resource of pretty much everything that has an impact on Google search ranking, complete with more information, linked guides and strategies, and a whole lot more. It's an immense piece of content. The only reason this content continues to get a ton of links, ranking and exposure from people like me is because Brian keeps it up to date whenever there's any new information to be had.

If he didn't, it would quickly start to decay, with some information no longer relevant, some invalid, some dramatically changed, and so on. After a few years, it would be an interesting historical relic, but nothing worth referencing. We pick blog topics like hedge funds pick stocks. Then, we create articles that are 10x better to earn the top spot. Content marketing has two ingredients - content and marketing. We've earned our black belts in both.

Now, you know Google uses dates in their search snippets if a date is available and they can verify it. They will only use a date if it's a reasonable date — which is why many backdated posts don't get dates in their snippets — but they can update the date if the post has an updated date.

Backlinko's post there is a good example. As of this writing, the post has "last updated Jan 22, " at the top of it. Google's search results reflect that, with that being the displayed date for the content.

I believe that Google will actually check to make sure something in the content has been updated before they use the new date, so you can't just lie and say you updated content when you didn't actually change anything but the date.

However, I don't have real proof of that, and for all I know, you can trick Google into thinking your content is more recent than it is. So this is kind of a pro and a con. On the one hand, if you remove the publication date entirely, your content can stand on its own and you don't have to worry about keeping the date updated.

You make sure people are aware that it's an ongoing, up-to-date resource, and that's that. On the other hand, you can keep the date updated and visible, and people who pay attention to dates in the search results might be able to tell just how updated it is. It's kind of value either way. Depending on the way you have your site structured, you might run into issues with changing or removing dates from your posts.

A lot of WordPress blogs have dates built into the URL structure of the site. The default is usually something like domain. If your URL structure has a date included in it, removing the date from the content won't be enough to remove it from the Google snippet , or from public awareness. I can see how old a piece of content is based on the URL, and so can anyone else.

If you decide to change the URL, then you have a whole new host of problems. Google assigns value to a post based on the URL. The URL is a unique identifier. It's like the social security number for your blog post. It's important that the URL stays as static as possible. Sure, you can redirect the old URL to the new one, but you do lose some SEO value in doing so.

Plus, if you ever remove the redirect, any old backlinks pointing to that old content become broken links. Not only does that remove value from your site, but it also gives your competitors an option to pursue broken link building.

The typical solution to this is to maintain the old URL structure for old posts, but remove dates from new posts moving forward. This works just fine, though it does add some disconnect between post URL styles for anyone familiar enough with your site to notice. If you do update your URL structure, it's imperative that your old blog post URLs redirect to the new ones without the date. One concern you may have comes from the reason you may want to be removing dates from your content.

If you're trying to hide how old a piece of content is, for example, like you want to make all of your content feel more timeless, or just make people not realize how old your content actually is, removing dates makes it harder to discern how old the content is. That said, it's not impossible to identify the age of content with dates removed.

For example, does your blog have comments enabled? If so, anyone can scroll down and see the comments, and see the dates those comments were posted. That gives them a ballpark for the publication date. They can also search for the URL online and look for dates of publication on other posts that link to your post, or on social media posts you used to share the post. And, heck, if they really want, they can check the internet archive for their indexation date to see how old the content is.

Lastly, you can usually check the page source - content management systems like WordPress will put the publication date hidden in your blog post code, where users and search engines can see it. At a certain point, truly hiding your blog post date is more trouble than it's worth. One potential issue that can come up is that some people use Google and use date filters for their searches. Google's date filters are pretty tricky.

As you can see, changing the "last updated" date for your content pushes it further ahead in the index, and historical information is not retained. Anyone searching for that article in a time span from years before — when the article existed or when the article was initially published — will not find it. It effectively moves the article to a different date.

What about a post that doesn't have a date attached? Here's an example: a post titled "Why Not To Date Your Blog Posts" by Don Crowther. So what does this mean? If you don't display a date, Google will use the only date it knows: the date they indexed it.

Even though you're hoping your content will appear more relevant without a date displayed, it won't show up in filtered searches unless you have an actual updated date attached. So as you can see, there are a few more cons than pros, but the cons are all little nitpicky quirks of the system, whereas the pros are more broad, overarching pieces of value. I still think they're about comparable.

I personally don't use dates as part of my URL structure, but they're visible as the publication or updated date at the top of a post, and I'm fine with that. What about you? Let us know in the comments below! James Parsons is the founder and CEO of Content Powered, a content creation company.

Thank you so much for this post! Very well written and answered my questions thoroughly. And thank you so much for the wrap-up telling us what you have chosen to do with your own posts! Very helpful! For what it's worth, I tried this on one of my web properties and noticed rankings dropped sharply in the months following. When I put the blog post dates back, rankings picked back up. It could have been a coincidence, but that was enough for me to leave it as-is.

It is a logical assumption. If you write a post that is not time-sensitive, like advice or how-to articles, there is no need to show a publishing date on the page. Some time ago, I wrote an article about how and why bloggers should be publishing evergreen content. In it, I said, get rid of the date on a post. It is not difficult, as all it takes to publish evergreen content is to write timeless content. Then hide the publishing dates on blogs with a little CSS code.

With a little coding knowledge or using a WordPress plugin, it is even possible to hide a post published date from search engines.

Many professional bloggers believe in this approach of hiding article dates because it makes a lot of sense. Timeless, evergreen, or everlasting content is all about timelessness. So why would you show and admit that you wrote the post three years ago? As long as the articles are regularly updated, using a date stamp remover helps keep an article from being dated in search engine results. The moment arrived for me a couple of months ago.

By habit, I changed the search setting to The Past Year. They are sure to be out of date. When you have a small problem or are looking for information, what use is content from ? Or in other words, how can I be so hypocritical about this content date stamp issue?

I think that was my final moment of clarity. After a week of thinking about it, I decided to change what had been one of the pillars of my blog. Just Publishing Advice was from its inception an evergreen site. But I like to know the date of the information I read. I refreshed a lot of images to give uniformity and added, edited, or changed a lot of content and older posts. Then when it came time to unhide all the publishing dates, I had another moment of clarity. I went back to another Google search to see how I could show the original publishing date and a date for any content that I had updated.

It took a bit of trial and error, some coding, and help from my WordPress developer. But finally, I could add an updated date in the metadata of every article. Readers of Just Publishing Advice can now see both the original publishing and updated content dates at the head of every article. The evergreen content argument is not one that you can categorize as right or wrong. For some evergreen bloggers, removing dates on blog posts is the right approach.

For others, showing dates on single posts is okay. While for some bloggers, showing dates can adversely affect SEO. There is no single correct or right approach. You need to decide what is best for your blog based on your traffic data on Google Analytics and Search Console.

For my site, I would now prefer to be open about the content I write and post. Also, about what has happened to the content since it was originally published. By adding an updated date, I can inform my readers that I have revisited an article and checked its content and usefulness. Or I made changes to enhance the article. I would be very interested to hear from readers. What do you think about the importance of dates on blog posts and articles you read.

Article update: Since writing this article, I have revisited this date issue yet again. I made a small change to how the article date appears on this site.

This one date is either the original publishing date or the date when the article was updated and refreshed with new content or advice. Google and most other search engines use the last modified date for indexed pages and posts, so it seems logical to do the same. But if you are curious, you can always find the original published date by checking the source code. A Cambridge CELTA English teacher and author with a passion for writing and all forms of publishing. My days are spent writing and blogging, as well as testing and taming new technology.

I believe it is up to the content. Mine is rarely about trends, but I decided to hide the dates from search engines and to show them to readers because such is the nature of my content. My blog asks the reader for constant engagement and with visible dates, I keep myself accountable and my readers too. The creator is, however, responsible to update the blog post if things change in time. I agree, Olivera. I often think about a topic such as, how to open a coconut.

But if it was published and dated in , it would struggle to appear in search results. So it needs to have either no date or to use an updated date to have a chance to rank. The understated rationale to humanize wins it for me. So the idea of dating blogs no pun intended : is about letting users know they are valued over the bot race. Good luck with it, Ian. I know it is a bit of a project! I changed themes to get exactly what I wanted.

Even then, I had to get my WordPress developer to do a bit of extra coding magic. Especially in the area, you mentioned, of getting the order right for latest posts based on the updated date. Have decided to display the updated-at rather than published-at date on posts, like you. But this is a less critical change. But there is an important secondary issue with posts. In what order should they to be sorted and displayed on the home page and in things like sidebar lists?

On most themes the published-at date will be used by default for this. After all, if you have genuinely reworked an old post it makes sense to bring it back up to the top so people will see it. I hope more sites will come to experience the same moment of clarity you did.

Mending kettles, using a comments box and even dating all become irrelevant if the advice is too old. There are exceptions. Truly evergreen features include history — although theories change all the time — and gardening.

There again, new products come onto the market and trends in planting. OMG, thank you! Given how fast the internet and the world is changing, advice that was great in can be obsolete by if, for example, WordPress releases an update or Amazon changes its algorithms.

I always show dates on my posts just because it annoys me so much not to have them. Skip to content You are here: Home » Blogging » Dates On Evergreen Blog Posts — Why I Add Dates To My Articles. Updated November 10, Derek Haines Views. Should you show dates on blog posts? If you write evergreen content and articles, why would you show the published date? In contrast, a news site or blog would need a blog date and time stamp.

Derek Haines A Cambridge CELTA English teacher and author with a passion for writing and all forms of publishing.

More Advice Articles Can Free SEO Tools Do Everything You Need To Do For Your Site? Learn How To Make Money From Blogging For Beginners. Should You Add Google Adsense Advertising To Your Blog? Again, thank you! Comments are closed.

We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. Cookie Policy. Cookie settings ACCEPT.

Manage consent. Close Privacy Overview This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website.

We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.

Necessary Necessary. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.

To cite multiple reporters, just separate them with commas in your reference entry. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter , Facebook and LinkedIn. Plus, we'll show you how to use them in MS Word. Contact Lireo Designs Durham Canton, MI Phone: Lireo Designs on Twitter LinkedIn. Another bonus: including a date on the post adds trust. Let's say I'm researching a historical topic. Canva resume templates let you make a great-looking resume for free.

Categories:

• Best dating
• Dating sites
• Dating website
• Dating apps
• Free apps