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Backfill your corporate history onto your blog for Google

Choose your own date when you post old content on Wordpress

You won’t confuse your visitors or piss off Google Search if you start posting historical newsletters, news items, press releases, product launches, and blog posts — as long as you’re honest. Take advantage of the fact that most modern content management  and blogging systems allow you to time-stamp your post with the current time; or, you can choose the year, month, day, hour, and minute yourself. And you should!

Everything But The Kitchen Sink

Go back and backfill everything that you can. You won’t get dinged by Google as long as you do your best to accurately timestamp your posts and uploads because if Google thinks you’re selling decade-old donuts as fresh and hot, then you’ll get in trouble. Google recognizes datestamps at an architectural level.

Google Webmaster Tools Data Highlighter

And, if you’re not certain, you should take a look at teaching Google about your site via Google Webmaster Tool’s Data Highlighter. I use it myself in order to instruct Google how to parse my Plone site since I don’t want to assume Google’s spiders and bots are as familiar with this open source Zope– and Python-based CMS:

google data highlighter in google webmaster tools

I have actually been using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to dig myself all the way back to 1996. It’s slow going but any time I find something that I have written, I post it onto my personal site and publish it on the date and time it was originally published. I will go deeper that just mining and harvesting the Wayback Machine, I will also scan and OCR any and all content that I can find from my own life and do my best to past and/or upload all that stuff into my site’s Zope Object Database (ZODB), tagging it with the proper year, month, day, and time — or as close as I can get.

Your Old Content Will Fill Google’s Missing Pieces

I am already getting traffic because I am filling in Google voids. Google abhors vacuums and the biggest vacuums in Google’s index and search engine has to do with history.  For example, I was able to find a blog post I wrote on March 7, 2001, about my love affair with my Motorola T900 2-way pager.

The Plone Publishing Date

There’s not a lot out there about them and so even though I “stole” my old content off of the Wayback Machine and then re-posted it onto my modern Chris Abraham blog, it doesn’t matter. I posted the post into my Plone CMS retroactively on Mar 07, 2001 12:00 AM, according to Plone, so I am obviously not remotely attempting to fool anyone–even Google knows that. But when I search for the Motorola T900 2-way pager on Google search today, my blog post from 2001 comes up 16th:

Motorola-t900-2way-pager

You really should be doing the same thing–just be painfully honest about the date of creation before you hit the publish button.

Google Always Chooses Deep Over Superficial

Choose your own date when you post old content on WordPressThe problem with most websites is that they’re not remotely deep enough. They’re just your driveway, your signage, your entrance way, your foyer, your window displays, and your showroom.  They’re not your history, they’re rarely your museum, and they’re almost never any of the stuff from last season, from your attic, storage area, or deep within your warehouse.

Let’s say your company was incorporated in 1974, you got your first domain name and brochureware website in 1997, had a proprietary CMS-based website built for you at great expense in 2008, transitioned to WordPress in 2012, and finally implemented blogging and a newsroom in 2016.

Maybe you just started blogging and posting your press and news releases onto your commercial, professional, and personal website–an entire decade or two or three after you incorporated and ten or twenty years since you registered your first domain.

Push Your Interns Down The Rabbit Hole

You should probably give your interns the project because it’s a major time sink. I still recommend you do it, because even if your human visitors never click on your site map and fall down your historical rabbit hole, Google will. And, if Google does, then these ancient and possible irrelevant posts will bring people. A trickle, yes; but, depending on how many people you need to visit per every sales conversion, maybe that’s enough.

Don’t be afraid!  Be sure to include all the content that you created before all the pivots and reinventions that you’ve make over the course of your company’s history.

Even though you’ve deleted those abandoned products and services, your archive of newsletters, press releases, and blog posts that predate those changes, will hook those people who are looking for that. Once they get to your site, they’ll have the opportunity to get to know the new you.

Feel free to own the yacht but hire a crew if you’re not yet seaworthy. If you get my drift and want to adopt the yachting lifestyle yourself but either don’t have the mad sailing skills yourself, don’t yet posses a world-class crew, and don’t know yet where to go, then you should give me a call or reach out me by email — so I can help you pilot your vessel now, in the tranquil blue-green shallows of the Caribbean, as well as in the roughest seas and into — as well as out of — the storm.

If you’d like to chat more, call me at +1 (202) 869-3210 Ext 0001  email me, or feel free to self-schedule a 15-minute call, a 30-minute call, or a 60-minute call with me.

Chris Abraham

Chris Abraham, digital strategist and technologist, is a leading expert in digital: search engine optimization (SEO), online relationship management (ORM), Internet privacy, Wikipedia curationsocial media strategy, and online public relations with a focus on blogger outreachinfluencer engagement, and Internet crisis response, with the digital PR and social media marketing agency Gerris digital. [Feel free to self-schedule a 15-minute call, a 30-minute call, or a 60-minute call with me] A pioneer in online social networks and publishing, with a natural facility for anticipating the next big thing, Chris is an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant and adviser to the industries' leading firms. Chris Abraham specializes in web technologies, including content marketing, online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media.  Chris Abraham was named a Top 50 Social Media Power Influencer by Forbes, #1 PR2.0 Influencer by Traackr, and top-10 social media influencers by Marketwire; and, for what it’s worth, Chris has a Klout of 79 the last time he looked. Chris Abraham started doing web development back in 1994, SEO in 1998, blogging in 1999, influencer engagement in 2003, social media strategy in 2005, blogger outreach in 2006, and Wikipedia curation in 2007. Feel free to self-schedule a 15-minute call, a 30-minute call, or a 60-minute call. If you want to know the services that Chris offers check out Services If you want to work with Chris use the Contact Form You're welcome to follow me via Social Media You can learn more about Chris over in About Chris writes a lot so check out the Blog Chris offers webinars so check Events

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