Implementing content expiration dates in WordPress is a strategic approach that brings many benefits to website owners and visitors alike. By automatically deleting old content, you can maintain a fresh, relevant and organized website. This not only enhances user experience but also enhances search engine optimization and ensures compliance with time-sensitive regulations.
Benefits of set an Expiration Date
I know the first thing that might hit you is “why do I need to set an expiration date for WordPress content”. If I’m not mistaken, it should happen to you. So let me tell you why setting expiration date on WordPress site is so important.
Setting content expiration dates in your WordPress site offers several benefits:
Improve Your SEO
Search engines like “Google.com” always prioritize new and relevant content in their search results. Nobody likes old boring content. By regularly expiring outdated content, you can help increase your website’s SEO ranking by ensuring your site features up-to-date high-quality and timely information.
Freshness and Relevance
By automatically deprecating expired content, you ensure that your website only displays current and relevant information to your visitors. This helps maintain a positive user experience.
Content Management
Managing a large website (such as a news website) with a lot of content can be challenging. Setting an expiration date can automate the process of removing old content, saving you time and effort managing content. You can use another super plugin in this regard called “Super Post Cleaner“.
To set an expiration date for any content on your WordPress site, you usually need to use a plugin. There are many plugins available in the market. The two popular Post Expirator plugin I’d recommend for this purpose is “PublishPress Future” by publishpress & another is “Auto Post Expiration” by VIITORCLOUD.
Steps to Activate Post Expiration Feature in WordPress
Let’s jump straight to the main point of how to install these Post Expirator WordPress plugin in your site to help your business or blog to grow.
- Install The Plugins: Go to your WordPress dashboard, navigate to the “Plugins” section, click “Add New” and search with the keyword “postexpirator”. You find these two great plugins on the front page. One is “PublishPress Future” and the other is “Auto Post Expiration“. Install either one and activate the plugin. Both the plugins are tested with latest major wordpress updates. So you can trust both of these recommended plugins.
- Configure the Plugin: Both plugins have similar settings with similar functionality. After activation, go to “Settings” > “A Post Expiratory Plugin You Installed” to configure the plugin’s settings.
- Set Expiration Date: You can set default expiration options and choose how the expiration date appears on your posts. Now you good to go.
These two plugins works quite similar way.
VIITORCLOUD’s “Auto Post Expiration” is a simple plugin that allows setting post expiration dates to a preferred date and time that sets posts to “Draft” status. You can select the date/time you want this post to expire. This will set the post to “Draft” status and you will no longer see the post.
And the another plugin called “PublishPress Future” which helps you to automatically unpublish WordPress posts at will.
Now you are one step closer to the finishing step. Just choose your expired action. I mean you can choose what happens when content expires. You may want to set it to “Draft” or “Private” so that the content is no longer visible to viewers. Either way your old information will be hidden from your website visitors.
Once you set the expiration date and action, save or update the post. The plugin will automatically manage content visibility based on expiration settings. You can set different dates and times for each post to publish it on time.
Conclusion:
Benefits of setting expiration dates for wordpress posts include improved SEO rankings, reduced clutter, enhanced user experience, streamlined content management, better compliance, focused analytics, consistent branding, optimized server resources, and the ability to effectively manage promotions and time-sensitive offers.
incorporating expiration dates into your content strategy enables you to present accurate, valuable information to your audience, maintain a competitive online presence, and create a more engaging digital environment for your audience.