People love a fresh and updated blog. Google’s Search Engine (and others) really likes a blog that’s updating consistently and regularly. Many other indexing services and ranking systems take the “freshness” of your blog very seriously.
So, why don’t you update regularly?
Ah, I gotcha. You’re too busy. You don’t feel like you have enough to say. Yada yada yada.
Well, here’s a great way to keep your blog fresh without having to dedicate all that time: Create an “aside” category.
Typically, this type of category is a brief update covering anything you’d like. Michael Hyatt just create one called “Resources” that is perfect for his audience and for his updating schedule, since there are times where he may “skip” a day.
But, with his new Resources section, he can throw up a blog post daily, keeping the content of the overall system fresh while not having to dedicate the typical amount of time he spends on a “full” post.
Genius!
Some other great examples of an Asides Category could be:
- What Tools your using to get stuff done.
- Random quotes that you like.
- What you’re reading currently (Check out TogetherWeThink.com’s “What We’re Reading” section on the right sidebar).
- Images or a Video.
- Sites of Interest.
- Your current location (Geolocation).
Just make sure that you position the Aside outside the main Content Loop in WordPress (or whatever platform you’re using) so that it doesn’t feed into your main content bucket. Putting it in a separate page or on the sidebar will do you just fine!
[Image from Gregor_y]
An excellent post John. I never really thought much about this but there are times when you want to put something a little more meatier than a "Tweet" but not really big enough to be a full post. This is something I will set up on my site as well. Thanks for jogging my mind.
Scott, sure thing! its' a great strategy.
Thanks, John,
Question, though – why put it outside the loop … I mean, if it's content that is still relevant (in Michael's case, I think it would be – wouldn't anyone following his Blog RSS be interested in those resources he uses?) … why not put it in your main content feed?
Just curious. What's the thinking there.
I was thinking about this, too. I haven't been on his site lately, but those short posts show up in the RSS feed, and I enjoy them. I guess I understand having them not show up on the homepage, though, since that would get pretty cluttered pretty quickly. I'd like to hear more opinions on this.
Add me to the list of being curious about not including these types of posts in a feed. Many times I follow a blog because I'm interested in the overall person that writes on the blog. Seeing little clips about their life, or resources, or tip, etc would be good too.
Great idea though. Definitely something I'm going to incorporate.
do it!
No more excuses. It's time to crap or get off the pot!
This may be the solution to my problems. I really like crafting my articles, but I definitely have more to say. Perhaps I'll give it a shot.
peace|dewde
ok I think I need a tutorial on how to make an aside page. =) Great idea.
Perhaps I should… should I do a “part 2″ of this post?
that would be cool because i'm confused as to whether these posts will show up for rss readers or do people you want to read all of them have to subscribe to something else too?
You can actually make it so that you can exclude certain categories:
http://www.jangro.com/wordpress/excluding-posts-f... />
john