Date-Stamp for Blog Content

A ‘sticky’ website is a website that is capable of enticing visitors to stay longer than the usual span of time and is capable of encouraging visitors to return in the future. Removing the date from the blogs is considered to be a useful technique if you want to achieve the result. However, it is a controversial issue and there is support for both “in favour of using the dates” and “against using the dates” on the blogs.

Let me acknowledge you first, adding a label of “DATE” is the choice of individuals. In some cases, it’s beneficial and on opposite side it may harm, too. Majorly, choice depends on the content what you are opted to publish…

Let’s Discuss What Happens on Applying Date-Stamp to Blog-Post

Viewers can easily distinguish recent blog-posts from the old blog-posts whenever you date a blog-post and this distinction may become harmful to your website if you post time-sensitive blogs. In this scenario, the viewers may leave your website without reading a blog if they notice that a blog-post is old.

For example, a blog on your website may deliver some tips to the viewers on a particular issue. These tips may have been relevant in the past and are equally relevant at present. However, if a viewer notices an earlier date on the blog-post, then he/she may consider that these tips are outdated and may leave the website without reading the text.

Therefore, it is prudent not to date a time-sensitive blog-post. However, removing the date may not adversely affect the websites with evergreen blogs; although, it is hard to predict how many viewers will consider a particular blog to be evergreen. Adding dates to the blogs may have positive effects in some scenarios. The following examples may shed some light on this matter.

You may add dates to the recent blogs (For ex: blogs on recent events, movie/shows, industry updates, current affairs, all-time favourite topical concepts of readers and more), as it enables you to capture the attention of the viewers. It signals to the viewers that the information featured on the post is up-to-date. Therefore, dating recent blogs is a judicious step in such above mentioned cases.
You may even bring the recent posts in focus and date only the recent blogs on the front page instead of dating all blogs. In this scenario, the viewers may feel that all the blogs on your website are up-to-date after noticing the latest dates on the front-page blogs.
There is another way to date the blogs without adversely affecting the traffic to your website. You may use subtle colours when featuring the dates and shift a viewer’s focus off the date. You may feature the date at the bottom of a blog-post in order to keep the data out of the focus until a viewer finishes reading through a post. To keep the appearance subtle, you may even use smaller fonts for a date in comparison to the font of the headline. The aforementioned techniques let you use dates on the blogs whilst bringing the content of a blog into the focus instead of the dates.

How “Date” Affects Search Engine Ranking?

It may be possible to enhance the user experience in some scenarios using the date on blogs. However, displaying the dates on Google’s SERP may adversely affect the online traffic and keyword ranking of your website. Hence, it is prudent not to show the dates to the search-engines even when it is shown to the users. You may even feature the date when you last updated a blog instead of featuring the time when you posted a blog. When dating a blog, it is equally important to consider how frequently you are planning to update this post. If you frequently post updates, then using a date on the post may benefit your website.

Let us know whether you show the date on a post or not, and what method you use if you display dates to the user but hide them from search engines.