If you have a popular post(s), leave them alone.
Today’s Lesson
About ten days ago, I wrote a post on my other blog. Amazingly, within hours, I was getting hits/views.
After reviewing the post, “one more time”, I decided to make a small change to it.
That was a mistake!
The next day, I had no hits/views of the post. I checked the search terms others has used the day before, and finally found a link to my blog, but not directly to the post (permalink).
I immediately changed the post to the original content, and began to watch it.
Within a few days, I began to start getting hits/views again.
I don’t know how many visitors I lost, due to me changing the post, but I’m sure it was a few hundred.
Today’s Assignment
It’s one thing to update old post that are buried in your archives, however, if you have a post that is popular, or is getting regular hits/views, leave it alone
Has this ever happened to you?
How did you correct the problem?
That is scary – just by changing one small thing you lost traffic. I have not experienced this sort of thing yet, because I’m still trying to change my blog to get some organic traffic.
Was it the title that you changed or the content?
Hi Catherine,
No, I didn’t change the title , I added a short paragraph at the end. I don’t know why that mattered, but it appeared to.
As much as I hated losing traffic, I am glad I learned what not to do. Now that the post is generating traffic again, I am leaving it alone.
In the future, I think I would just write another post on the same topic, being careful not to have duplicate content, and then link to the popular post.
Hi Natural,
I leave the popular ones alone, but plan on rewriting some of the old ones that don’t get any action. That’s also a great way to gain more blogging topics.
i’ll update a post if i see an error, but most times i don’t bother with it anymore unless someone comments on it and then i might read it again.
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