What The Hell Did You Do To Your Home Page Again?
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Come on people… you know me! I make changes to my site more than the weather changes. For some people, you get aggravated, for others, you get puzzled. Please keep in mind that in my business, I have to learn! I have to be top of my game in order to provide clients and customers the ultimate service for the things I do.
How do I stay on the top of my game? Easy, I use my personal blog that gets well over 5000 visits per day direct from search engines as a testing ground. Sorry… that just comes with the territory of reading my blog. LOL!!!
Anyway, to make light of this change, I’ll explain what I did and why I did it. The change today took place on my home page only, it will soon extend into my tag pages. I have removed tags from being shown on my home page, I have also removed showing the full posts from the home page.
Back when I redesigned by blog (LOL you’re thinking… ah, yeah which time!) I started showing the full posts on my home page. Quickly, I noticed that it was taking much longer for search engines to pick up my newly written content. Displaying the full posts coupled with showing my tags is what I believe to be the problem. What you see today is the action I am taking towards this.
While my blog continues to grow regular readers, I can NOT deny myself of getting my content indexed into the major search engines. And the home page reflects a design that will quickly allow for search engine crawlers to find my content very quickly and easily.
And let’s not fail to mention how much easier it should be for end users to also find content they want to read want to read directly off my home page. The way my home page is presented, you can quickly scroll and scan for articles that appeal to you. Secondly, you can also get a snap shot on how many people have commented. All in all I believe that my home page is very user friendly which in many ways also goes hand in hand with being search engine friendly.
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Date/Time: 3-12-2008 15:03:38 Comment #12338
HAhahahaha, Garry you change your blog more than my girlfriend changes her shoes.
You plan on doing a blog design tute anytime in the future.
Im not so sure if removing tags is a good thing, i found one of your posts that was a included a tag the post URL, cant remeber which one it was
Date/Time: 3-12-2008 16:23:37 Comment #12341
Tags will still get indexed. But I want them to get found directly off my individual post page rather than my home page.
I want my home page to be a source for search engines and people to find my content. From there search engines and end users can stumble into my tags which will help search engines and people find and make record of other related content.
Not to worry, tags are still in place, I am just micro managing how they are presented in code and on my pages.
Date/Time: 3-12-2008 17:22:59 Comment #12345
haha, I’ve got use to it. Actually whenever I click your link I wonder what new thing you’ve done.
It’s looking better and less confusing to me. 
Date/Time: 3-12-2008 17:28:54 Comment #12347
I’m in the same position as you Garry, my blog is in a constant state of flux as I use it for testing code and whatnot for the other websites I manage and design.
One question though, will you RSS still be published in full? I found that depending on how I limited my posts on my frontpage I would also limit my RSS which in turn dropped my subscriber base pretty rapidly, as soon as I went back to serving a full feed it then grew back to where it was prior to the change.
Cheers
Matt
Date/Time: 3-12-2008 18:49:51 Comment #12351
@ Matt,
My RSS Feed is very treasured… I’ll always display the full feed on that. I don’t really like it when people do experts on RSS, in my opinion it kinds defeats the purpose. People who like to read RSS do so because then don’t like to visit the site.
Date/Time: 3-13-2008 04:15:40 Comment #12368
I haven’t been a reader/subscriber long enough to notice your blog design changes. Does this mean I’m heading into a wonderful journey of suspense and enlightenment