Traffic! Traffic!! Traffic!!! Every internet marketer wants website traffic! The back-bone of every businesses – either offline or online – is the amount of quality targeted customers that patronize the business. Without constant flows of repeated happy paying customers, a business will die a premature death.

1. http://cybernaira.com – Blogging tips to help you make money online. Page 1
Removing Postdates From Your Blog – Bad or
Good Practice?
After so many worries, considerations, meditation and research – and looking at it
from both users and marketers points of view, I decided to write about it -
removing posts dates from your blog and or, search engine results pages.
If you’ve noticed lately on this blog, I have removed postdates on it – though not
yet permanent, still testing to see what really works better and what doesn’t.
But before anything, I have a question for you and this directly applies to
webmasters – why removing postdates (in the case of those who have already done
this on their blog) or would you want to remove dates on your blog?
Put yourself in reader’s shoe.
Have you been searching for an information and you visit a certain blog where you
were directed through search engine and after going through with the whole
article, putting to practice every advice given – implementing every detail guide of
it to the latter, only to find out that the information you were giving became
obsolete after the year 2005?
I know most us – content marketers – wants our articles to be evergreen, but the
truth is, there is no 100% of evergreen information. Even if the fundamentals
remain the same….just as buying and selling would ever be; the application or its
execution wouldn’t and never will remain the same.
What works today, might not work tomorrow and even in the years coming.

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From reader’s points of view, am writing this article. So, I put myself in their
shoes; and believe is an unethical practices to intentionally remove postdates on
your blog posts. So each reader that visit your blog the first time never knew when
last the blog was updated.
And this could also give a false impression that your blog is been constantly
updated; and another way to hide your failure to regularly update your blog post.
Reader’s False Assumptions……
Although, also from users point of view – readers are full of assumption upon
seeing a dates on blog post, that it either the information is obsolete or relevant to
their query.
But in reality, an older date on a post doesn’t translate to old or out-dated
information – it only mean and give clearly when the information was lastly
updated.
Before Google’s first algorithms updates, the SEO industry was full of great and
workable advices on how you can build gazillion back-links in a very simple and
quick ways.
And this information is still on the pages of the internet.
Now things have changed a lot and done differently. The way link building is done
now, especially after Matts Cutt blew his whistles on guest posting is completely
getting new approaches and fundamentals.
Now, here is the problem; when you run a Google search on how to build back-
links, the search results pages are full of combine pages of both older and newer
information that provide answers to your query.
If published dates or in some exceptional cases, last updated dates is not clearly
visible on the blog post, then the reader is in a very deep problem. He might ended

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up taking away an information that only has been put to death by one of those
Google algorithms updates – penguin, panda or hummingbird.
Bigger problem, if this information was giving on an authority blog and this reader
hold it closely to the heart and follow it religiously.
We’re here to Help, Not To Deceive….
We should be conversant of our reason being here – to serve the needs of the
readers – if we’re to lure readers into engaging with our content in a way that is
unethical, then we have intentionally defeat the primary reason we’re here – to
provide valuable information that solves users problems and consequently,
improve the standards of their living.
I see so many authorities’ blogs doing this on their websites – CopyBlogger,
Wikipedia, WordPress codec etc. But I believe this is not the best if they truly care
about their followers, and understand the detriment in which this could cause
reader if the advice taking from their blog happens to be outdated.
Think, if you’re about to download a software, and four different version of it was
display and with no dates as to when each one was release.
Going by the fast pace of changes in the world of technology; I guess you’re about
to crash your system if the latest version is not installed and you might even expose
yourself to cyber risk.
Two sides to a coin: The benefits of removing
postdates in SERP.
While I was Goggling to know more on why do bloggers do this -removing posts
dates – I stumbled upon an article written by Harsh Agrawal of shoutmeloud, and
this very one written by Mack Collier.

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While these two posts are far from decisive or giving a clear stands on this topic,
you’ll want to read more insightful case study blog post written by wpbeginner.
This topic is more of an individual decision, it depend on what you want and what
you intend to give back to your readers.
But based on what I “assume” and would agree with Harsh Agrawal on – removing
post dates from “search engine” results pages could lead to higher CTR – Note, not
removing postdates on your blog.
Often, when I run a search query and results shows up, and presented both with
pages with dates and no dates on them. From reader’s stands, I will rather click on
page with the most recent dates or click on the one with no dates.
But click on an older dates of more than a year or so?
You might also want to click on either the link with no date attached to it – benefits
of doubt – or, the link with a more recent date to it, but click on the link with the
year 2009 to it?
I don’t think I would do that, and only if the author is an authority blogger and he
is well considered an expert in such topic, then I might consider taking a look.

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My take from all these – till the end of the month, I want to experiment with
removing dates from search results pages and see if my assumption on increasing
CTR would be right, I strongly believe it will.
But for the time being, I have to remove dates too on this blog due to fact that am
not a coder, I use a plugin recommended by Harsh Agrawal – this plugin can only
take out dates both on the blog and search result pages. Until then, am finding
ways to leave blog postdate and only take it out on SERP.
Till then, I keep my finger cross and will report back here how everything goes.