When you write a blog entry every day, you live in the now. Your blog day revolves around tending the day’s comments and helping to press forward the conversation.
I admit I get thrown a bit when comments on older articles — even from yesterday! — pop up because those articles feel so foreign and distant.
I’m not sure if it’s good or bad to live in a 24-hour cycle of immediate freshness — especially with an international readership where 24-hour cycles a begin and end at different times!

24 Comments

  1. Hi David. This is a fun look behind the scenes of a blog. Do older comments torment you and do you wish only new comments?

  2. Hiya Anne!
    Oh, no! I love all comments. Comments give meaning and perspective to a post — all posts, both good and bad. It’s just that sometimes when I go back to an “old” post — even one as “old” as yesterday, I have to pause and remind myself where I was at that time and what my intent was in the post and following comments.

  3. That’s good to know. What’s fresh to you might not be what’s fresh to someone else. If a person reads an old article first then isn’t that article new to them?

  4. Yes, absolutely, Anne. Freshness is a matter of perspective and that’s why I have to stay on point and remember the freshness factor isn’t based on a 24-hour cycle like my blog postings. Once an article is live, it takes on a revolving freshness that doesn’t require or even need my ongoing involvement to keep it immediate.

  5. It must be hard to remember everything you said. I bet there are times when you go back and read what you wrote and you wonder who wrote that.

  6. Hi David,
    I checked out a book from the library yesterday written by blogger and Squidoo creator Seth Godin. The book reads like Seth’s posts on his blog.
    I tend to take the long view on my blog posts. I have a blog that I haven’t posted to in a while for various reasons — the large one being that I don’t own the domain and don’t have control over the platform as a result. But, my readers never came to my blog for my daily updates, so not updating hasn’t caused any problems because most people come to visit because of search engine results or links posted at other blogs.
    I use the old blog to send traffic to my newer blog, which I use to send traffic to another brand new blog which will probably end up doing the same one of these days when it starts picking up “organic” traffic as it matures.
    Some content is “evergreen” and will draw attention long after the original post is made.
    In fact, I’ve found that when starting a new blog, it takes a little while for the blog to get out of the “sandbox” that search engines place new blogs in during their infancy. During this time, it is a good idea to write with a longer term focus since most readers won’t see the post immediately, but may notice it three months later when it gets indexed.

  7. Yes, Anne, a blog is a living journal — in public — that reminds you of all your mistakes and failings!
    😀
    I am surprised many times by what I wrote in both comments and posts. I am usually surprised in a good way — “I wrote that!” — instead of “Why did I write that?”
    😉

  8. Keep up the effort. I know a lot of people who read the blog but don’t comment. I don’t know why. Commenting is part of the fun.

  9. Chris!
    Thanks for sharing your blogging experience and philosophy!
    Which domain don’t you own? Can you redirect all your traffic there to your new spot? Do you have .htaccess control for the domain you don’t own?
    I agree writing for the long view is always the best method. I am surprised, though, how some of my reviews have such a great resonance after they have been published.
    Some reviews are more popular than the “regular” posts! That kind of anomaly makes it hard to predict what posts will or will not be popular.
    I guess you just have to try to follow your own guidelines for what you think is good and interesting and the hope you pick up a few people along the way.

  11. Hi David,
    The dopetype.net domain is the one that I don’t own, but that keeps increasing in traffic as time passes. I like getting the traffic over there, because it sends traffic to the sites that I host on my own servers, so I don’t want to do anything to mess with it right now.
    In September 2005, the month the blog started, I had 564 unique visitors and 708 page loads — mostly from Blogexplosion. This September, I had 66,367 unique visitors and 113,366 page views.
    When I started Sexyhiphopvixens.com and advertised it on the dopetype site, the first month of its existence showed 6,048 unique visitors and 20,383 page loads. Not bad for a bad new blog! By September, the readers had increased to 26,635 unique visitors and 70,066 page views — all through organic search engine results and referrals. 🙂
    I did backup and copy everything from the dopetype site so that if the site ever goes down like it did earlier this year, I could repost everything to my own site. I don’t have .htaccess control since the site is like using a free blogger account and using Google’s servers for the hosting.
    It shows that writing “evergreen” posts is worthwhile. Your reviews are perfect examples of organically obtained quality search engine traffic.

  12. Hi Chris!
    You have created an excellent niche of interest on the web that brings you explosive results! Congrats!
    It’s fascinating how you have the top three spots in a Google search for “Karrie Steffans”:
    http://www.google.com/search?q=karrie%20steffans
    While a more formal search on “Karrine Steffans” doesn’t put you in the Top 10:
    http://www.google.com/search?q=karrine%20steffans
    Is “Karrie Steffans” a by-design flip on her name to get traffic or is there something else at play?

  13. Hi David,
    On the formal Karrine Steffans search, you’ll notice the lovely Karrine Steffans herself is in the number one position. There probably isn’t too much I could do to prevent that since she has the money and time to work on search engine positioning and will pick up links — some even from my site — by virtue of being Karrine. I do have the Squidoo lens listed at #5 that sends traffic to my sites, however, so I’m doing pretty well there for an amateur who spends just a little time on the side working on my blog. 🙂
    I always do well with the misspellings. I don’t do it intentionally, but I have a theory that one or two misspellings combined with a lot of the regularly spell keywords can get good results.
    I wonder if I should add meta tags to my blogs. I haven’t done that since it’s not a something that most blogs do, but I wonder if it would help with search engine positioning?
    Here are Karrine Steffan’s meta tags:
    Welcome to Karrine.com

  14. Chris!
    Ahhh! I got it now. That’s a smart tactic to take when creating pages.
    Meta keyword tags were invaluable five years ago but people started abusing them so now most search engines prefer to give more weight to sites that have visible content and then index based on what readers can actually read when they visit your site.
    http://www.highrankings.com/metakeyword.htm

  15. WordPress stripped out the “raw” meta tags, but if you go to her site and view the page source you can see there aren’t many. Having a good domain name also helps the search engines with positioning, especially if it has “good” keywords.
    If you search for Karrine Steffans and her meta tags say Karrine Steffans and her domain name is Karrine Steffans dot com, it’s a natural for #1. 🙂

  16. I took a look at the link for the “high rankings” and noticed (and planned for this) that one of the words (the “S” word) in my domain name is highly and often searched.

  17. Right. Her site should be the first return because if you’re looking for her you want her!
    😀
    Is she ever known as “Karrie” or is that an on-purpose misspelling?

  19. Hi David,
    I don’t think she’s ever gone by Karrie. I bet I misspelled her name a couple of times and that’s why I up there for the misspelling. As my blog gets a little older, it should start showing up in listings for the correct spelling.
    The same thing happens with “Meylssa Ford.”
    I always mean to spell the name the right way, but I must have enough of the keywords that the mispelling gets me close or at the very top.
    Having a good niche — and being able to passionately blog about it and follow it — it the key to anything.

  23. 26 October 2006 – 5:33pm EST
    Testing ability to comment on past blogs.
    David,
    I had to do a test comment on this one just because of the title / blog. lol.
    A S

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