Blogging tips #5.5: Preparing for events

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

This is one where I have to give all the credit to an article on Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger. It’s all there, and I could just give you that link and be a lazy bastard.

But, basically, it’s like this: pages take some time (weeks, probably) to be indexed by search engines, right? So, suppose there are some presidential elections, and, the very minute that the results are known, you, typing faster than a speeding bullet (if, of course, bullets typed…), write a brilliant article with all the results, comments, opinions, etc..

But few people go there. Mostly, it’s your regular readers, or possibly some people coming from Technorati searches. Even though it’s a certainty that thousands of people are, at that moment, googling for “presidential election results” or some variation of that.

The thing is that you should have written that article - minus the actual results - weeks ago! The article should already have the right name, and be linked to in your main page. And that article should already mention the candidates’ names, some speculation, etc.. And it should mention things like “election results” (as in “the election results will be posted here”). Then, when the results are out, you simply edit that article, instead of posting a new one.

It’s not rocket science, although, as I said, I owe this piece of knowledge to Darren. Thanks, Darren.

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