For those who have known me through this old blog of mine over the years, the ones who are left probably recall that I once really knew what I was doing back in the days. That, however, has changed and it became obvious to me just this last couple of days. I have to learn that SEO stuff all over again.
I’ve always been a happy blogger or at least a content one as long as the platform I used behaved itself–which occasionally it didn’t. Things were rather more difficult in the early years since the platform I used and still use was terribly primitive as compared to today’s version. Still, it was always a good feeling when you managed to ‘hard code’ a widget into that pesky sidebar you’d been working on the past week. Nowadays it’s all point and click and I couldn’t ‘hard code’ if my battered old soul depended on it.
I used to post once every day or so, I had plenty of visitors and several contacts of the ‘Blogging Pro’ variety. I even earned those badges on that pesky sidebar I mentioned earlier. I was known to help other folks who were just starting out their own adventure in blogging using the same platform I was. I didn’t even charge them–glad to help since there were those who helped me early on.
And any post I published could easily be found on the first page of any major search engine. I really knew that SEO stuff back then
But that was then. It certainly isn’t now.
So what happened? I slowly stopped writing up posts is what happened. No real reason for it at all, I just seemed to fall into some sort of semi-retired somnolence as my (writing) imagination slowly fizzled out. No matter what I did I couldn’t come up with a single worthwhile thing to post about.
Fast forward to today (about 2 years of very sporadic posts later), I decided to see if I could get back into it a bit. I’d always kept my blogging platform updated with the latest virtual doo-dads and upgrades so no problem there and the site worked slick enough but that was about it. It was when I went looking for the old ‘Google Webmaster Tools’ that it finally hit me that I’d been gone too long.
Google webmaster tools was gone. Where did it go?
After much anguished searching I finally found out that ol’ GWT had been totally revamped and was now called ‘Google Search Console‘. So I guess I’m no longer a web master but a…uh…search? A console? A search console? Whatever.
I also found out that although my site was still listed in the ‘Search Console’ that was about it. During the transition from’webmaster’ to ‘search console’ Google had managed to not only strip out my sitemaps listings but removed my site verification as well. The verification I so carefully and manually ‘hard coded’ long ago.
Thankfully, the ‘hard coded’ verification code I had placed in my site’s engineering section back in the stone age was still there and I was able to verify it once again. Then it was resubmitting the XML sitemaps but wait–there no sitemaps to submit. The damn things were apparently missing and I had to go find them again. Then I found out the reason they were missing and had to re-install a plugin that I removed a couple of days ago, along with said sitemaps. Then I had to regenerate and re-submit and verify some more and take care of crawl errors which were thankfully few and…
By this time my brain was so overheated my eyeballs were bubbling. It wasn’t used to being used for so much for so long since it’s been so long since it’s been used for anything much. Probably need to give it a rest and let it cool down some before I attempt anything else.
Confusing paragraph, yes?
So I guess I’m in for a re-learning curve if I’m to continue on. A lot of things have changed as far as blogging is concerned. Different rules, different online environment, different everything. Lots to learn.
Well, what the heck. I’ve got all winter and perhaps it will wake my brain back up?
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