When we built Creator Theme, we knew that we wanted certain functionality to be immediately available for our users. Something that bloggers have requested from my development team over the years is to share both the published and last modified date.
In the past, we’ve offered this as a quick-fix task for our custom theme clients. Then, we created a plugin at our sister brand Small Plugins to make this functionality more accessible.
Why do we want to offer both the published and last modified date to our users?
This recommendation comes directly from Google. In their outline of what changed in the helpful content update, they ask:
Are you changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed?
Google Search Central
Of all aspects of E-E-A-T, google claims in the above article that “trust is most important.”
Our theme shows both the published and last modified date to improve user experience. You can be both the guru who understood this topic in 2015, and who also improved how the information is conveyed in 2023 by using this setting in our theme.
How this looks for users
Here’s an example on Kimber of Easy Family Recipes posts.
Our site looks like this:
Not using Creator theme? No problem!
We’ve created a sister brand, Small Plugins to offer the functionality that our clients have asked for throughout the years with simple, straightforward plugins that just work.
Post date smarter modified is the plugin we built to support block-based themes and offer this functionality a la carte!
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