Don’t you know if you’re more creative with your expiry dates you’ll receive more exposure? Many code sites, including my own promote highest the codes that are expiring soon. These are often popular as customers love to bag a bargain before it disappears.

My statistics show that I sometimes generate more sales for a merchant where the code is about to expire. The reasoning is simple, those merchants are promoted above the fold on the home page and across the site. I typically will put a merchant in this slot up to three days before the promotion is to end.

So, if you want say free three days promotion over-and-above what you’re getting already then just stop making your code expire the last day of the month.

My newer site Voucher Diary will concentrate on expiring codes so it will pay even more to stand out and not have a code expire on the same day as 40 other merchants do. I’m not currently updating that site much but as it’s returning on page one on Google SERPs I’m under pressure to start populating it quickly.

The dates below list the number of merchants with codes expiring on that date.

• 14/08 (2)
• 15/08 (5)
• 16/08 (1)
• 17/08 (1)
• 19/08 (1)
• 20/08 (3)
• 21/08 (1)
• 22/08 (1)
• 23/08 (1)
• 24/08 (1)
• 25/08 (1)
• 28/08 (1)
• 29/08 (3)
• 30/08 (1)
• 31/08 (42)

Now, who wants to have their code expire 27th August instead?

Please note that I wouldn’t want you to take this to the extreme and do what Waterstone’s do and that is have a code that is valid from 2pm for only 24 hours. I don’t work to those time frames yet.

a

The sale was for Yes Asia on the Webgains network and the user had searched for “yes asia coupons”. I can see from StatCounter that the user was from Singapore and was using Google Singapore.

The reason the page was removed was because I put some draft copy on for the first two days of its soft launch. I then disabled the WordPress posts as I changed the tone of the copy being posted.

Voucher Diary currently only includes a dozen posts but I am impressed with its position in Google already for some decent search terms. One of the pages is number one for a search phrase that I’d love my other site Shop Codes to be in. As it is, it’s for a merchant where the code has just expired.

I’ve not yet thought of the best approach to handle these expired posts/pages. The nature of Voucher Diary is that the posts will expire as soon as the codes do. That’s the whole objective – highlight expiring voucher codes. So I’ll have a play with that over the weekend.

Good to see that a sale was made from abroad too and maybe Voucher Diary has opportunity to promote other International merchants.

a

Voucher Diary is the third (but not final) stage of my WordPress experiment.

Experiment 1 – 1234 Codes

In January I launched 1234codes as a back-up to my Shop Codes content. It was effectively the same content but on another domain. I wanted to see how Google compared both sites and in particular the pages. Google preferred 1234codes and the Shop Codes pages were often in the Supplemental index.

Experiment 2 – Shop Codes – bite size

I then upgraded WordPress but in the process lost my content so I implemented a WordPress blog within the Shop Codes site. Calling it ‘Shop Codes – bite size‘ it was the same content but with a different navigation structure and a lot less graphic intensive. Again I could compare how Google treated the same content within the same domain.

During July, Google listed both pages together in the SERPS. If you performed a search for ‘Comet’ say, the first result for my site would be the original Shop Codes page and the second indented result would be the ‘bite size’ version.

I then went away on holiday for three weeks and didn’t perform any site updates. I came back to find that Google had again changed the way it displayed my site in the results. This was at the same time they removed their Supplemental Index.

This time around the ‘bite size’ pages were getting top billing but the original Shop Codes merchants pages were hidden a little deeper.

So in both cases it was clear that Google preferred the cleaner build of the WordPress pages rather than my hand crafted own.

With ‘bite size’ I am having template issues, in that it always reverts back to the original design, so I have spent a few evenings searching for the best free designs available, looking for one that will stick.

Experiment 3 – Voucher Diary

Whilst browsing WordPress themes I found two designs that were designed to look like a diary. I’m sat on several domain names that I’ve not touched since I’ve purchased them and so I thought it would be an appropriate time to have a play with ‘Voucher Diary’.

The focus of ‘Voucher Diary’ will be to display codes that are new or about to expire. I’d not launched this sooner as I don’t have a CMS but Word Press has a plug-in or two you can use to handle expired posts.

I launched it with duplicate content to begin with, allowing me time to find a design and category structure I was comfortable with.

I then looked at the tone of the content and thought best it should be written in a diary style. So I am currently playing with having a male and female guest characters updating the content.

And that’s where I am today. I’ve still got design and content to modify until I’m satisfied with the final product but it’s good to see that it is being indexed by Google already.

a