Better to update or add articles?
-
Hi,
We have an online gift store and we write new blogs every year. Question is, if we already had a blog that's called 'Top Valentine Gifts' from last year,should we update the blog content with the most updated data,
or should we add a new blog called 'Top Valentine Gifts 2012' and rename the old one to 'Top Valentine Gifts 2011' (and 301 redirect the old URL)?
Which one is more beneficial in terms of SEO?
-
Make the new page for 2012 and then link it from the 2011 page.
Believe me I am all for adding year values on websites, you would be surprised how many people search with the year value it is a crucial element.
I would start the social buzz, articles, blogging, link building for the page as valentines day is soon.
-
If you have evergreen content that's going to repurposed every year, it's definitely best to have a URL without the year, unless the year is relevant to the content*.
If it were my site, I would create a new page (not blog post), titled /top-valentine-gifts/ or whatever you choose, and create a link on the 2011 page to the new page - something like "Click here to see the best valentine gifts". Feel free to make the title & h1 for the page say 2012 and update that each year, just don't include it in the URL.
If you're concerned about blog subscribers seeing the content in the blog section or the RSS feed, then I would create a blog post along the lines of "Best Valentine's Day Gifts for 2012" that has some unique content that is valuable for this year, and link that to the primary page that has content relevant to all years.
*** If the year is relevant to the content:**
One example of where I would use the year in a page URL is if the content was going to be relevant only to that year, such as Best Movies of 2011 or 2012 Olympics. If there is value to keeping that content around for years with the original content on it, then that's a good argument for creating new pages for each event.If you're really savvy, keep tabs on who links to your 2012 Olympics content, so that you can contact those people when 2014 rolls around...
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Where to add new content
I run a vBulletin website and vBulletin isnt very SEO friendly. I do fairly well in Google for most of my keywords, but forums dont necessarily build strong page authority etc. My site deals with fishing reports across the state of VA and drives 15-18k sessions a month and close to 100,000 page views a month based on Google Analytics. I want to start targeting new keywords and I am concerned about vBulletin inability to be SEO friendly. Many of my new keywords arent dynamic like fishing reports that are added by members daily. These are more like campgrounds, marinas etc. My thought is to install a Wordpress blog and build out this content so I can efficiently deal with on page SEO. the vBulletin software is installed in the root so I would install wordpress in something like mydomain/lake123/ Is the right thing to do, and will google see multiple sitemaps (one for vbulletin and another for wordpress) and index appropriately? Am I missing something major here? Thanks ~ Brian
On-Page Optimization | | FCBCO0 -
Should I add PDF manuals to my product pages?
Hello. A lot of the products I sell on my e-commerce site are very technical. I decided to add PDF data sheets, manuals etc on each of the product pages to improve the customer experience. Now I am not sure if it was the best thing to do. I have noticed a couple of times that the PDF is out ranking the product page in the SERP. For a few products, the PDF ranks but the product page doesn't. Anyone got any ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | DavidLenehan0 -
Is it SEO-wise to edit an already published article?
One of the pages on the website is #7 on the first page for a highly competetive keyword. Since I would like to improve rankings and the page is not optimized (e.g. keyword density is 0), is it SEO-wise to edit an article and create a good on-page optimization? Of course, the ultimate goal is to be in TOP 3 for a specific keyword.
On-Page Optimization | | zorsto1 -
Best Way To Pass Rank To Follow Up Article?
What is the best way to pass rank to a follow-up article? For example, we write an article "Product A Rumors" that ends up ranking #1. When Product A is released, we write an article called "Product A Review". What is the best way to pass rank from the first pre-release article to the second post-release article? We don't want to do a simple 301 redirect as we want readers to be able to go back to the first article to see the progression of the Product A life-cycle. Also, should we go back and edit the old article to add a link to the new? Should we add a link in the new article to the old? Thanks in advance 😉
On-Page Optimization | | Humanovation0 -
Add Expires Headers
I noticed recommendations from yslow on "add expires headers" but they refer to sites that plug into mine (such as a you tube video). Can anything be done about this recommendation?
On-Page Optimization | | casper4340 -
What is a better mobile domain from an SEO perspective an m.example.com or using your regular domain with user agent detection?
Just wondering what domain is more beneficial for a mobile site and why.
On-Page Optimization | | CabbageTree0 -
Several short articles, or one long one?
This may be a very basic question... In terms of the overall benefit to the SEO of a website, is it better to have, say, 4 pages about different aspects of the same subject (i.e. wooden lintels, steel lintels, concrete lintels and cavity lintels) or to have one page containing all the information? I have a site with roughly 250 pages, which could probably condense down to almost half that. The vast majority of inbound links point to either the homepage or one of the 20-odd most vistited pages. Of those, 2 or 3 pages count for roughly 70% of entrances. So should I concentrate on adding new pages, or improving/expanding the existing pages?
On-Page Optimization | | Jingo010 -
Original content and the Google Panda Update
We are an online furniture store with about 1300 products on the site, and we mostly use the catalogue descriptions for the product. Recently I have been reading about One Way Furniture: http://ecommerceprnews.com/e-commerce_articles/2011/03/one-way-furniture-shifts-toward-quality-content-after-google-panda-update-201928.htm They are a big american online furniture which seemed to have lost about a 3rd of there traffic due to being punished in the panda update. Now it seems they are blaming the fact they use they use catalogue descriptions for the product (like us), and now they are going to rewrite all their product descriptions. We are a small company and rewriting 1300 products (meaningfully) is no small task. Looking at our own traffic we have taken a small slump since feb after about 18 months of general increased month on month traffic ( bar seasonal dips and boost), but we didn't have a "fall of the cliff" like One Way Furniture. But have been expanding into other areas (and there for new keywords), so we had expected to be increasing our traffic. So the question is, how important is unique content for all our products? is it worth all the time and money to fix all the pages? Our plan is to make sure our category pages (and there for landing pages) have unique content, would that be enough on its own, or are the product pages damaging the site over all?
On-Page Optimization | | eunaneunan0