Fresh Content Still As important?
-
We have an internal debate, that perhaps y'all can help us resolve.
In the past "freshness" of content has been important, correct? (Google's QDF for example) In the past (to present) when we build a site with the intent to SEO the site, we build the core pages with the expectation that we will be adding more site pages as the project progresses, thus settling the "fresh content" factor.
But it has been proposed to us, from a client, that completely building the site out with all the pages you hope to rank, getting the upfront bang for your buck. The expectation is that the traffic soars right-off.
Now the client says that he has been doing this for years and has not been affected by any alog changes. (although we have not seen proof of this from him)
So our question is this: Is it better to provide a website full of fresh content at the beginning of the project, for a jumpstart on traffic, then leave the site alone ( for the most part)
or
Is it better to have core pages of fresh content at the start, and build out new pages from their, so the website remains fresh every month?
And can you prove your argument? (we need cold hard facts to be convinced
-
EGOL, a big time member on these forums posted years ago that there will be a day when the only thing that a search engine truly judges a website on is Keywords and content. Now I'm not entirely sure I'm completely on board with that (I'm about 95%), but I do agree that content, especially after the recent SE updates, has shifted back into power.
My father owns a business, we make educational materials for people with mild to severe autism. He is very successful, and he personally doesn't have the time or energy to spend in writing a daily blog, and unfortunately doesn't trust anybody to ghost write for him.
So we came up with an alternative. A combo of original content mixed with educational reports, interesting studies, and every now and then some strange funny story from theOnion. We would post at least one original piece a week, if we could 2, and then everything else from there. I made a few Bullying Infographics for his business to post and share on social media. Now, it wasn't always keyword heavy content, but as long as it was content worth sharing, it did get us a lot of links.
At the end of the day, if I have to make a decision on how Google is doing something, I try to remind myself Google is in the business of making money. They do that by providing the best, accurate, human, natural, semantic, organic, pefect-beacue-I-am-a-snowflake, result. Google, in my opinion, will take how current the website is, into account.
Content is King.
-
This is our thought as well. A continuous feed of fresh content is a better approach than a one off. This is how we've been doing it, but we're really interested in knowing if others have tried this other approach, with any lasting sustainability in traffic or ranking. ( we kind of doubt it, but would love to see proof that it works)
-
The QDF is aimed at hot/current topics right ? So while it might be important for a news site or a celebrity gossip site I don't think it will be relevant for every site.
You have mentioned that the client has proposed to build the site with "all the pages you hope to rank for", which means the topic is restrictive and there is a limit to what you can write about the subject. But then to launch the site with this approach you need to get all the content ready and that might take some time.
A much more sensible approach would be to launch the site with a reasonable amount of content and then add the rest of the content when possible. This way you can start with the link building, social sharing process early.
I don't think just because you launch a site with lots of fresh content it will give you a jump start in traffic, but I'm interested to see if anyone had success with this method.
-
Fresh content is definitely important and while you may get the boost at the start you'll quickly loose it if you're not putting up new content.
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
-
How important is Lighthouse page speed measurement?
Hi, Many experts cite the Lighthouse speed as an important factor for search ranking. It's confusing because several top sites have Lighthouse speed of 30-40, yet they rank well. Also, some sites that load quickly have a low Lighthouse speed score (when I test on mobile/desktop they load much quicker than stated by Lighthouse). When we look at other image rich sites (such as Airbnb, John Deere etc) the Lighthouse score can be 30-40. Our site https://www.equipmentradar.com/ loads quickly on Desktop and Mobile, but the Lighthouse score is similar to Airbnb and so forth. We have many photos similar to photo below, probably 30-40, many of which load async. Should we spend more time optimizing Lighthouse or is it ok? Are large images fine to load async? Thank you, Dave bg_05.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | erdev0 -
We setup a new Google Analytics account for the new domain but the old one is still there
Hi, Our company has changed their domain almost a year ago and after the migration, they created a new Google Analytics account rather than changing the address on the existing GA account. Now I can still see that Google indexing the old domain. Just wanted to ask if we can still tell Google that we've changed the domain on the old one? Or, should we just go ahead and use the new one and delete the old one? Very confusing, but our traffic is constantly dropping although we rank for on the first page for tracked keywords, just want to understand if there is a connection between the organic traffic droppings and not telling Google we've changed the domain. Thanks! NJt7vbJ
Reporting & Analytics | | Lucidica0 -
Big drop in organic traffic after moving the website-should we still do 301 redirects?
Hi,
Reporting & Analytics | | martin1970
We have a website that got redesigned with new urls in Jan 31, 2018. Since then our SEO traffic has gone down big time and to never recover. We did not do any 301 redirects back then (very stupid I know but I was not in charge then). So my question is would it be beneficial to 301 redirect old urls that were once ranked but now have all 404 errors or is it too late to do these 301 to gain any benefits? If a page that was once ranked and then have a 404 error, how long does google keep that 404 page in their database? I have heard information saying that although the page is a 404 it may still be indexed in their backend for some time and then it completely drops off all together. If so do you know how long time they would keep those 404 in their database? The old urls may have had good backlinks pointed to them because the organic traffic was good back then. So I wonder if doing 301 right now would help send some link juice over to the new urls? Or would this be a complete waste of time? Cheers Martin1 -
Backlinks or content? What is the problem here?
My Moz ranking is 29, Ahrefs Domain rank is 49 and Majestic Citation flow is 44 whereas trust flow is 17. This is a plain question - If the above are the rankings for backlink problem, then where is the problem more likely to be found? Backlink or content? In more detail - My site has been dropping in search since the last few weeks. With these rankings, is it likely that a backlink related problem is there? I myself agree that some content is poor and thin and there is a problem of plagiarism also. But overall, do i keep focusing on content? I do not know how good are these rankings as shown above. My URL is www.marketing91.com Please let me know whether the backlink profile looks good or not? So that at least i am not worried that there is a backlink problem as well. (i will surely work on toxic links soon) I can worry only on content.
Reporting & Analytics | | marketing910 -
I have a WP site which uses categories to display the same content in several locations. Which items should get a canonical tag to avoid a ding for duplicate content?
So...I have a Knowledge Center and press room that pretty much use the same posts. So...technically the content looks like its on several pages because the post shows up on the Category listing page. Do I add a Canonical tag to each individual post...so that it is the only one that is counted? Also...I have a LONG disclaimer that goes at the bottom of most of the posts. would this count as duplicate content? Is there a way to markup a single paragraph to tell the spiders not to crawl it?
Reporting & Analytics | | LindsayiHart0 -
Why am i still seeing very recent organic kw traffic being reported in Analytics if G is now fully encrypted ?
Why am i still seeing very recent organic kw traffic being reported in Analytics if G is now fully encrypted ? Should it not all be 'Not Provided' now ? When this fully roles out if not already wont it be impossible to distinguish between brand and non brand kw ? Cheers Dan
Reporting & Analytics | | Dan-Lawrence1 -
Why seomoz shows me "missing meta discription" on this plugin: http://villasdiani.com/wp-content/plugins/dopbsp/frontend-ajax.php ? Should I edit? how?? IIs it posible??
Good day to all! I am very confuse about results on seomoz Crawl Diagnostics Summary, especially with 6 Crawl Warnings Found. It says title too short: http://villasdiani.com/category/mombasa/, http://villasdiani.com/category/watamu/ , http://villasdiani.com/sitemap/ why would Google punish me for this??? why should I make longer title for sitemap? or Watamu? It is the name of the place - Watamu or Mombasa. It is very confusing for me. I have very big mess with the website and it is not ranking:-( what I have done:-( and is it possible to meta description for this plugin: http://villasdiani.com/wp-content/plugins/dopbsp/frontend-ajax.php how?? I even do not know where is it.
Reporting & Analytics | | VillasDiani0 -
Solving link and duplicate content errors created by Wordpress blog and tags?
SEOmoz tells me my site's blog (a Wordpress site) has 2 big problems: a few pages with too many links and duplicate content. The problem is that these pages seem legit the way they are, but obviously I need to fix the problem, sooooo... Duplicate content error: error is a result of being able to search the blog by tags. Each blog post has mutliple tags, so the url.com/blog/tag pages occasionally show the same articles. Anyone know of a way to not get penalized for this? Should I exclude these pages from being crawled/sitemapped? Too many links error: SEOmoz tells me my main blog page has too many links (both url.com/blog/ and url.com/blog-2/) - these pages have excerpts of 6 most recent blog posts. I feel like this should not be an error... anyone know of a solution that will keep the site from being penalized by these pages? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | RUNNERagency0