The Importance of Time Stamps
April 17th, 2011 by John M
It’s such a small thing, a time stamp. That small, almost unnoticeable mark that you place near your web content to indicate a publication date really seems insignificant. It takes up a tiny part of your page, and most internet users don’t even pay attention to it. It makes you wonder why you should bother with it at all.
It makes you wonder – that is, unless you’re a SEO professional or online marketer. The industry is very aware of how important a time stamp is on content.
Why are time stamps important? The main reason is the increasing interest the search engines have in recent content. As internet users become more and more interested in recent results, the search engines have had to step up their game. For site owners, this has meant that time is an important factor in their search engine optimisation. The freshness of your content counts in a big way toward your rankings.
Placement of time stamps is important too
As with many factors in SEO, it’s not just the presence of the time stamp that matters. The placement counts as well. Having your time stamp hidden away at the bottom of your article lessens the impact it will have with the search engines.
It’s always good to study news format when designing the layout of your content pages, as this is the format most people are familiar with. The search engines seem to have based their weighting on this format as well. This means title, author and date of publication should be listed at the top of the page.
Time stamps age content, it’s true. The benefits of time stamping, however, far outweigh this drawback.
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