Article marketing is not a medium that is suited to non-evergreen content. Sorry, never was.

I’ve pondered this dilemma for quite a few years and determined that it’s currently impossible to solve without brute force and a disruptive reorganizing of the article syndication galaxy.

Getting every webmaster and ezine publisher to update their archives whenever an article is updated would be a lot like cat herding… ie: They just don’t want to do it and don’t have a high enough incentive to care – minus the few who care about delivering a great user experience.

The Legation, the embassy in Rabat and “Google Alert” have asked that my article be updated to show the correct URL. I did this the other day with “The Foreign Service, Journal Entry Morocco, Immediate Update.” But if the article isn’t getting out, neither is my message.

It’s causing tourist problems, even tho the State Dept. and Museum have tried to put out the right INFO. Is there some other way I can do this? Email won’t help since there is no one to email. Apparently people are holding on to my original article for reference, along with whatever else they are gathering for a trip to Morocco.

Updated articles do not get re-promoted in the RSS feeds or email alerts or anything that feeds from them.

We have no intention of doing so to prevent gaming of the system.

Could you imagine what would happen if everyone found out they could re-assert their article to the top of the email/rss promotion hill? It would be chaos and our users would suffer a bad experience.

What we could consider though: When we release a new feature later this year that we’re already building, we could give the option to email subscribers to get notified when an article has been updated from someone they are following. Will consider this seriously.

Sometimes we write very good articles on instinct or ebullient mood or good research or all combined. Now, to better that if we mess up the article and it eventually gets rejected, we lose on all counts. Many writers or filmmakers fail to better their masterpieces all their life. Inherent dangers of creativity?

Interesting suggestion, but I don’t like the idea of editing my best articles and adding more value.
I prefer to write new articles and never go back to the old ones. When I write whatever I never finish writing until I’m completely satisfied with what I read, so I don’t have any reason to touch what is already perfect. Of course, it can always be improved if you deeply examine this question, but why not write a new one, with this additional information?

The unique thing that many times I want to change in my articles to make them more attractive is the title, because many times very valuable articles don’t receive the attention they deserve only because their title is not the ideal one.

Your articles do not reset in terms of viewcount when you edit them.

Ian,

The article title is only one component, and while it’s important — it’s hardly the only component that works into the traffic attraction equation.

Karen,

There will be no coasting here! More cool stuff on deck.

After the widget idea, you could have coasted, you know.

Judy, thanks for the great eBook. Love the “child learning to walk” analogy. And the good karma!

Karen

If we leave the titles the same, how will there be any more traffic?

Abundance to All

Croz

This time you opened my eyes once again. I never thought of refreshing an articles content. In fact I thought you were just supposed to post it and move on to another article. Your strategy makes good sense. If you hit on something popular why not expand it!

I look forward to your next news letter (The pressure is on) Thanks for the good content!