Starting over, over and over
When you start your first blog, you’re going to get a lot of things wrong. That’s why The Blog Cop exists!
But if you keep going beyond your first few months (many people don’t), you may want to leave your mistakes behind and start over. For some, this means a new domain, and a new blogging platform. Lots of people seem to move from Blogger to WordPress, for instance.
That’s all well and good.
Until, somewhere down the line, you decide it’s time for another change. You’re going to wipe your blog, and maybe use a new domain.
Maybe you didn’t pay your bills and you lost your old domain. Bit silly if that’s the case.
Or you just got sick of your old blog and needed a change.
Why not just set aside your existing blog and start a second one? You don’t have to post constantly on both blogs – just leave the old one alone for a bit. Chances are, you’ll get sick of the new blog quickly too, then you can go back to the old one and get sick of that for a bit!
If you keep changing the URL of a blog, you’ll never get a decent amount of search engine traffic. So, stop moving the goalposts and you’ll have a better chance of scoring a goal.
5 responses to "Starting over, over and over"
23:39 on June 9th, 2010
I began with Blogger and then went to Typepad for my Pentimento blog because it was a low enough price and had many features I could use. One of my friends kept telling me I could do even better with WP so I started my genealogy blog. The only thing I would change now is the name of the genealogy blog, but it’s not a big issue and people still find me. It’s doing pretty good as a PR4. The typepad one is only a PR2.
0:26 on June 11th, 2010
WP is pretty solid for blogging. Best not to change the name of a blog if you can help it, if it ranks well at the moment. If it doesn’t rank well, change it to anything you like
18:31 on June 13th, 2010
Good subject for those of us considering changes. I guess I better not mess with mine. Last time I checked pagerank, I was a big fat zero, and now I’m a PR4!
18:43 on June 14th, 2010
The advice to leave an existing blog to start a fresh one is good. Three things happen though. All of the bad habits from the old blog tend to follow you unless you correct them from the get go. The old blog dies slowly because without new content readers stop coming. At some point if you decide to resurrect the old blog frustration quickly builds because it is essentially starting over under the shadow of the former blog’s mistakes.
The advice to quit changing the url comes with good timing as I am considering that for one of my blogs. It is well established so my fear is changing the url will hurt rather than help this blog.
20:04 on June 14th, 2010
PageRank can be transferred from one page to another via a 301 redirect. (Google it if you’re unsure; WP has some plugins to help with this, I believe). Note that PageRank – as the name suggests – is specific to a page rather than an entire blog. The homepage of your blog may have a different PageRank from one of your posts, for instance.
Starting afresh can work, and I’ve done it for a few of my blogs; but I think you need a very good reason. For instance, Top Ten Blog Tips might benefit from a relaunch – but I don’t have many ideas for new posts. And it ranks very well for a lot of things. So, I don’t think I’ll be changing it…