a new designAs most of you know, this blog has moved to a better home using the Wordpress platform. If you delve deeper, you will find that my old posts are now mirror copies of articles found on my new site at mysinigang.com.
Yet I couldn't get myself to delete this old blog.
It's my blog's first anniversary! This is the day I made the big switch from my Friendster blog to Blogger a year ago. I decided to revisit 'my past...' As I navigate in this old site, I realized why I kept it and why I should continue to hold on to it.
Why You Shouldn't Delete an Old Blog:
- For PosterityYour old blog is your beginning, your genesis. Because of it, you now have a better, stronger, more stable blog. This is where you learned the ropes in blogging. When you look back, you have something concrete to see and remember.
- For Archiving
Your old blog contains all your original materials up to the point when you made the switch. I've actually used 'archiving' to my full benefit when one of my popular articles was plagiarized. I was able to use it as proof that I own the post in question and when it was first published and such. (Of course, you can pre or post date articles now but archiving coupled with other tools can help in proving plagiarism of your articles.) - For Back up
In this case, I'm not paying anything to maintain this site. Why not use it as back up or fall back when s**t happens to you?! In this internet hijacking age, any blog is at risk to hacking or anything related. We are all vulnerable. Should something happen to your Wordpress or any blog, you have an old blog to go back to. Of course, the old blog can not replace what was lost in the new site but at least you have one thing to hold on to. It's hard starting over but it's better than NOTHING (that's why, it is important that you back up your database and files!! Back up, back up, back up!). - For Internet Age
If there's one area where age matters, it's the internet! The older you are in the internet, the better; the more Google and other search engines will love you! With age comes maturity of the site, with maturity comes credibility and worthiness. I'm talking about legitimate blogs here; not scrape or spam sites. As you site ages, your ranking in Google grows; it becomes more important to Google and other search engines.
- For keeping old records
... such as backlinks, site history, page rank and traffic. I'm not so sure if I believe the notion that Google penalizes a blog site for duplicate content. Perhaps for static websites like business sites duplicate content matters but for blogs, I don't think so. Or if it does, it doesn't have that much weight. Why? I'm using my sites as the guinea pig.
I have moved twice since I started blogging. My Friendster blog (which I still keep as well) and this Blogger blog pretty much are 80% identical. I transfered majority of my stuff from friendster here. In the same way, all the contents from here- I moved to Wordpress also. That's three same articles in three different websites. Duplicate content rules explain that it is not good for search engine optimization and ranking and should be avoided at all cost. It further says that in effect, search engines may consider your site a spam for showing duplicates in other sites and so will be branded as such. The likelihood that your site/posts will NOT show up in search is great and that Google may even take your PageRank.
The reason I'm not sure it matters in blogs because I have not lost my PageRank in both my old and new site. If you can see, this site has a PageRank of 2. My new site has PR2 as well. - For Keeping Backlinks
This is related to the above. Backlinks are like the backbone of your site's ranking in search engines. The more backlinks you have, the better you are fared. If you delete your blog, you delete ALL records of your existence in the internet. In my case, I have a blogspot URL here and my own dotcom URL in my new site, how does the blogspot URL help my dotcom in terms of backlinks when they are not the same URL?
If you have your old URL intact, people will be able to track you when they land on your old URL. Would you rather have a 404 page can't be found than an old yet reliable pages where people can find you and go to your new site?
Over time we have accumulated many links one way or another via exchange links or somebody giving us a link love or another quoting our site in their post. There is no way we can trace all our links. It is very time consuming to search for it. One way linking is very hard to manage as well since it entails contacting the other for changes. If you delete/change a permalink to your site, then there's no way one can find you again unless they know you and can go to your new site.
Your old blog keeps all those old permalinks and backlinks connected with other websites which you can no longer change. The old blog gives you a better chance to be found again by previous readers or old colleagues. - For FREE ADVERTISEMENT!
Why not use your old blog to promote your new one?! I've had many people go to my site coming from this old blog. If I deleted this blog, would they have still found me in my new site? The chances are slim.
While checking my Adsense account, I found out that Google still tracks my ads on this site while also crediting me on my new site!! I didn't think about that. All page impressions and clicks here count! Unbelievably, this site is still a traffic drawer and I'm getting decent hits which translates into Adsense money in the long run. Every penny counts!
Sinigang
