Is your blog out of date?

Solution to this that I have used is going back to edit and inserting (this program ended in 2010) please call me for a loan officer recommendation to find out what programs you do qualify for today.

Because I had some posts about programs gone bye-bye too.

I have taken posts down because they are dated and are no longer relevant. I would probably take down a post about the $8000 tax credit. That program turned out to be a government-funded disaster any way.

Kathy, I agree that some posts are out of date on the internet. I too look for the latest information.

Hi Kathy,  good point,  But I have found inquiries on old blogs are an opener for conversation with perhaps a potential client.

 

Unfortunately everything stays on the Internet forever these days so to keep things fresh we have to keep on blogging everyday!

Your point illustrates the value in the new AR search which allows filtering based on posted date.  I just discovered that this week and like it.

Hi Kathy, I was recently reminded of this when I had a buyer call on a listing I had that was two doors down from one that sold several months prior. They wanted to see "my listing" which I happen to be about 10 minutes away when they called. I met them there and they looked at the one that sold two doors down and said we were talking about that one! I asked where they saw it and sure enough, it was an old blog post on it. Now I make sure on any listings I blog about to go back and put sold on it just in case.

On something like the tax credit it is a good idea to tell them "hurry because it expires on x/x/2010" .  Most blogs have a date and time stamp on them so someone calling off old ads are going to get disappointed now and then.

Kathy, our blog posts do have dates on the bottom of the post. I have market report posts that were written years ago that rank in the Google SERPS. Buyers should look at the date of that post to make sure it's relevent. But I'm going to leave that post out there for perpituity bacause it ranks. Consumers do have some responsibility if looking to see how relevent the information may be.

Kathy, I probably need to go back and clean up some of my old posts!

When it comes to things like that, they can't be evergreen posts. You want to put the most informative, correct info out there for consumers.

Kathy I just recently renewed one of my old blogs. Well now that blog is back on page 1 for the keyword "Tantallon on the Potomac Fort Washington MD Homes for sale.  I even reposted one on my Wordpress site. Need to do some more. Thanks for sharing.

thanks for the reminder.  I am going back through mine to make sure they are dated or need to be removed.

The problem is that even if there is a date, people don't see it.  But the point of writing is to make the phone ring.  So even if that particular blog is not relevant, I am sure that we can come up with something that IS relevant and can help the caller in some way. Thank you for sharing!

Kathy, it is important to mention the date and time for time sensitive events in our posts for sure. However, you are right - some posts are timeless!

Wow! I'm sure there are a bazillion blogs out there on the $8,000 first time home buyers credit. I'm not sure what we can ever do, since we can't really go back to every blog we've written.

Kathy - I've gotten better about dating things like that in blog though I'm sure there's old stuff that wasn't.

You would hope search engines would return the most current stuff. It is not clear that search engines are looking at posting dates part of the relevance of a particular post for a particular search terms. I have searched for stuff (technical term for key words like "homes for sale in [city][state]" and I too have found my own information posted months and years ago ranking first when more recent posting about with more up-to-date information falls much lower on the page, or not at all. Search engine results don't yet seem to understand the concepts of "timeless" and "time sensitive". I blog market reports all the time, which are time sensitive and I would hope they rank higher in search results, but, most of the time they don't. Older posts may be relevant, but, not current!

Smart advice - I don't take down our older posts, but they always contain the relevant date to prevent something like this from happening.

You make a great point Kathy.  Now I just have to go back and review some of my older posts to make sure everything is current.