What to do with WordPress Old Posts

May 5, 2022 / Rockstar Blogging, WordPress / by Kathy Alice

I have a guilty confession to make, when I first created this blog over a decade ago, I was just interested in creating a site that was monetized with affiliate links. I signed up for a auto-blogging service targeting keywords such as internet marketing. These services then auto publish to your blog, the content usually has links placed by the author to their service or are affiliate links.

It was an eye-opener on what passes for decent writing. Fortunately I had moderated it so I had final publishing approval. Which was a smart decision, because most of it was awful. At best they were that general sort of forgettable writing that imparts no real value or knowledge. Many had obvious misspellings and were just thinly veiled attempts to get people to click on the links. I rejected many and there are not many that actually got published.

After reviewing these posts for a while, I thought to myself, “I can do a better job writing than this”, and that is how my blogging career was born.

Content Quality is essential for SEO

Since then the quality of your content has gotten even more important for ranking well in the Google SERPs. Even though we now have tools like generative AI at our disposal, it is essential that your content is helpful and useful and not just written for SEO.

Google recently released a new type of Algorithm Update called “Helpful Content Updates” which likely is aimed to weed out some AI generated content and certainly made for SEO content. If you are wondering what Google considers “Helpful Content” reviewing their comments on writing for “People First” is recommended.

So we all know that we need to publish useful and valuable content for people first and SEO second. What do we do about those old posts we have written many years ago that may not be up to our now enhanced quality standards?

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Throw out your keywords and go creative with your blog titles

April 8, 2012 / Digital Marketing, Rockstar Blogging, Search Engine Optimization / by Kathy Alice

For choosing your blog titles, here’s the advice I’m sure you’ve heard:

  • Build a keyword list of your blog’s main topic.
  • Choose some criteria to pick the most promising keywords (search volume, evidence of long tail, competition or CPC)
  • Write a post that has the keyword term in the page title, post title and at least a couple of times in the post body.

    • Spike in Traffic shown by Google Analytics
    Google Analytics doesn't lie - Sex Sells
    While I’m not saying the above doesn’t work, some of my most popular posts did not use the above methodology at all. Case in point: Recently I noticed people “frictionless sharing” an article from the Washington Post titled “4 Things You Do To Kill Her Sex Drive” on Facebook which I’m sure many were unaware that the Facebook social reader app was posting on their behalf. So I wrote an article on Facebook Social Reader Apps and recommended people review their app list in Facebook and take action to not broadcast to Facebook their browsing habits.

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16 Blog Directories – The Good, Bad and the Ugly

March 21, 2011 / Digital Marketing, Rockstar Blogging, Search Engine Optimization / by Kathy Alice

I’ve seen several “top blog directories to submit your blog to” articles, however these lists are often light on details or out of date. Here are 16 blog directories that I went to take a look at. Like regular web directories, some blog directories will only list you for a fee, and yet still more request a reciprocal link before they will list you. Some are rather sneaky about it, you don’t figure out you have to reciprocate or pay until you are a step or two into the submission process.

That being said, just like web directories, it might be worth paying for a listing in some of these blog directories, however that analysis (choosing which one to pay for) is for another day.

For some of these you should be prepared to create an account and choose a category that your blog belongs to. Some ask for a full profile. Some have validation/ownership verification processes. It WILL take more time than you expect. Many of these will have a human review the submission before publishing it. That’s ok, in fact it is good, as google looks more favorably on directories that have editorial review.

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