Do you think its better to have a published date AND a last updated date ? Does google even look if you updated but left the published date old
-
Do you think its better to have a published date AND a last updated date on Posts ? Does google even look if you updated but left the published date old
I was thinking of adding a "last updated" field to my articles. But is it worth it? or should I just keep it uncluttered and leave only the last published date? I would think that Google would not notice if I updated a last updated meta field since their is a published date field already.
-
I agree about not using css to hide the date. I would not hide anything on a webpage.
I don't know enough about WordPress to tell you how to do that. It probably can be done, but I don't know for sure.
-
Thank you for your response.
If I am going to NOT include a date on some posts - How would I go about doing this?
I use wordpress, and the post date is included in the post meta field by default when a post is published. I do not think that simply using css to hide the post date by "display:none" is the correct way, since that would only hide it from people and not from a google crawler. And I would NOT want to hide the date on ALL posts - Only on some posts. Do you know how I would go about implementing this? Would this require that I make another post template or something?
-
Thank you for your response.
But did they update their posts date ? Or just a p span that said something like Last Updated: 11/02/15
That is where I am confused. I use wordpress so I am trying to understand, that if I do implement a "Last Updated" field, I want to know if I have to physically code it into my single posts template file a certain way so that google can know what it is when it crawls it. The last thing I would want is to code it, but code it a certain way that google will see it as a p span that is part of the body text and not as a special last updated meta field or something like that. I see there are some plugins but I don't want to use a plugin for one meta field.
-
I think that a lot of articles can be written without a date if they are content that is close to being totally evergreen. If you add a date to these articles and that date is a few years old, it can tarnish the opinion of the visitor when there is nothing wrong with the article, and the article might even be among the very best on the web. So, I don't date a lot of my articles for that reason.
I am always upgrading articles, which is different from updating. An update is when you add fresh news or information that is totally new about the subject. An upgrade is when you add another section of evergreen content, add new photos, improve photos, add a video, do a rewrite for clarity, or other type of improvement. I notice that when I upgrade an article it often moves higher in the SERPs. Usually just a few positions if it is on the first page, but if it is deep in the SERPs, it might move up substantially. I've never had anything move from bottom of first page to #1, unless it moved into the featured snippet.
If you have a website with a few thousand articles and your author team is two or three people, if each of them update or upgrade one article every working day, there will be articles on your site that go a long time without an update. Figure 200 working days in a year and a three person team.... if you have a 6000 article website that means it will take ten years to upgrade or update every article - if you do them in a straight rotation.
-
There have been some interesting articles surfacing recently on this with the last study I read (this week) showing that simply updating the date with "Last Updated" and updating the article, refreshed something that was a year old and that had dropped from the first page to the second, and had reached position 1 again.
This is definitely something that anyone with a blog should look to do.
-Andy
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
-
Can a rel author tag point to a Google+ business page
I’m trying to get my blog posts to show with rich snippets but they are a collaborative effort from our staff and as such are posted under our business name. We do have some guest bloggers who write under their own name and we use the author tags to show this. Is there a similar way to do this with a business?
Content Development | | mark_baird0 -
Company blog relaunch. Best practices with Google Algorithm updates in mind?
We have a company blog living on our corporate domain. The blog contained many posts with keywords and we believe google is penalizing us for over optimization as we use to be ranked in the top 5 for our main keyword now we're on page 8. Keeping this in mind, we are planning to relaunch the blog and we wanted to get some tips on best practices that addressing the following questions. Should we archive _all _of our previously published content and start fresh with this relaunch? Should we keep 50 or so published blogs visible? Where should this blog live (on our domain or a wholly separate domain)? We'd love to get thoughts and opinions, and any insight about best practices for a blog relaunch.
Content Development | | plumvoice0 -
Google adsense image - text and alternatives
Hi, there has been a lot of talk on the internet about google adsense and which is better, image or text as well as what are the best alternatives to google adsense, so i thought i would throw out the topic on here and see what real website experts think about the topic. I have experienced google adsense image as better than text and would like to know what other people think and beside affliate ads what alternatives to google adsense do people like
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
This article on making money with your site has to be out of date, doesnt it
Came across this article on making money with your site but surely it must be out of date as a number of the recommendations breaks google guidelines. Here is the link to read the full article but below is a breakdown http://bloggerspassion.com/make-money-online-websites/ 1. Paid Blogging with Sponsored Reviews Publishers are able to make money selling paid reviews on their blogs and advertisers are able to create buzz, traffic and backlinks with SponsoredReviews website. My total earnings with this paid review website are $1631.95. You need to have 3 months old blog with 10 quality posts published to get accepted. 2. Make Money Selling Text Link Ads Bloggers are able to make good earnings selling text links and advertisers are able to get lots of high quality backlinks and traffic for their websites. This helps them earn a lot of money from the services and products they are selling on their websites. I’m so far I have been able to earn $7,711 with this website. You need PR 3 plus blogs to get accepted. would be interested in your thoughts on this
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Archiving old blog posts - yea or nay?
I'm building up my personal website. When I moved from my old domain to my current one a few years ago, I had moved a folder with all my old blog posts (from an old blogger.com account) to an archives called /blog/. It's bad enough the entries just text and nearly all the images aren't there but because of the way I moved over the posts, I have 200+ duplicate page titles with no meta descriptions. Is it worth saving these posts ? (putting them into an archives.mysite.com sub-domain?) I already have the folder disallowed in my robotos.txt file and there's nothing really incredible content-wise in the archives, though they are some of the oldest pages on my current (3 years old) domain. There's no real SEO thought in them as this was just a fun personal blog at the time. Thoughts?
Content Development | | JamesDziezynski0 -
Google still caching old site
Hi all, We just acquired a new domain that was being squatted on by a reseller for a very long time and on the 5th June migrated our site over to it, replacing their advertising holding page. The domain is http://primate.co.uk It's been a week now though and Google hasn't seemed to have updated it's cache. Doing a search for 'primate.co.uk' in Google lists the site but with the old holding page description. Web master tools doesn't report any errors or issues with the site. Does anyone know how we can get Google to index the domain and update it's cache? Cheers, Gordon
Content Development | | Primate0 -
Google News Sitemaps
I've noticed that Google News has withdrawn the necessity for there to be a minimum of 3 numerical digits in the URL if you submit the content via a new sitemap. Is this 100% correct? I'm working on a site rebuild for a client that is where submission to Google News will be instrumental in their strategy. Are there are difference between UK and US submission as this is UK based?
Content Development | | PerchDigital0