Thread: Move Date to After Post - Will It Increase Time Spent on Site?

I got the idea after watching this how to build a high traffic blog video presentation.

The 4 hour work week blogger suggests that people have a bias toward old content and prefer reading new content, so it's best to move the date to after the article. By default its displayed under the title on most wordpress themes. This change should increase the time spent on site because visitors won't know the date the post was published until they have read the article (if they landed on the blog post from a search engine).

Have Netbuilders implemented this change on their blogs? I've now made the change, but will need some time to measure its effectiveness.

One more tip i am not sure its new or not.

but avoid having date portions in Permalink Structure too.

in that case the content relevance doubt comes in might of user even before page is reached.

yeah good point mate, i either have only the post name or category and post name structure.

Why not simply remove the date from your blog pages, rather than moving it?

Hi,

I think that would also depend on the type of blog you have. The date also shows how current you are with your info. I really don't like finding a new article on something that I did not know about and when I do the research find out that it happened two years ago.

Sami

Originally Posted by TopDogger

Why not simply remove the date from your blog pages, rather than moving it?

I think that removing the data from the blog pages is a good idea when using wordpress as a content management system. For articles the date really isn't relevant.

If you're running a blog that you update regularly, you should keep the date in-tact.

This shows people that you're up-to-date, posting often, and it helps them determine whether or not the content is applicable now. If I'm writing an article about a contest going on, you'd probably be pissed to find out after reading that it's from two and a half years ago... am I right? Besides, I doubt that there is even much of a positive effect from moving or removing the date, regardless.

Originally Posted by Kovich

If you're running a blog that you update regularly, you should keep the date in-tact.

This shows people that you're up-to-date, posting often, and it helps them determine whether or not the content is applicable now. If I'm writing an article about a contest going on, you'd probably be pissed to find out after reading that it's from two and a half years ago... am I right? Besides, I doubt that there is even much of a positive effect from moving or removing the date, regardless.

This is the flip side where people that update often will want to highlight the fact.

The trick is mire useful for the people that don't update that often or use wordpress as a CMS.

Originally Posted by Sami4u

Hi,

I think that would also depend on the type of blog you have. The date also shows how current you are with your info. I really don't like finding a new article on something that I did not know about and when I do the research find out that it happened two years ago.

Sami

This is really true for a tech review blog or celebrity blog.

Originally Posted by bogart

This is really true for a tech review blog or celebrity blog.

Hi,

@ Kovich BINGO!!!

I think it would be true with more then just that. Don't forget any news/current info. It would look kinda funny to have a blog for on this day in history, and not show the date.

Sami

So if you are using wordpress as a CMS and the content you write about is 'timeless' you suggest not showing the date?