Updating existing content - good or bad?
-
Hi All,
There are many situations where I encounter the need (or the wish) to update existing content.
Here are few reasons:
- Some update turned up on the subject that does not justify a new posy / article but rather just adding two lines.
- The article was simply poorly written yet the page has PR as it is a good subject and is online for quite some time (alternatively I can create a new and improved article and 301 the old one to the new).
- Improving titles and sub titles of old existing articles.
I would love to hear your thoughts on each of the reasons...
Thanks
-
Wikipedia updates content all the time and they seem to rank rather well.
From google's perspective they would rather rank up-to-date content, so yes its got to be a good idea to update. An old page might have links to it, and history with google, so if it had up to date content its got to be better than a brand new page.
-
In all the 3 cases mentioned in the post, this seems like it is a good idea not to create new posts/pages and update the existing one. Obviously if the article is poorly written so in that case one should update the page after fixing the content of it instead of creating new pages... same is the case for the other 2 scenarios.
I think this video by SEOmoz contains your answer >> http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-interview-googles-matt-cutts-on-redirects-trust-more
Hope this helps!
-
- hi Fernando,
long time no see.
The site as a tool that is technically accurate however I just want to point out that if you don't have the tag obviously your link will not qualify but you don't need new hosting as it states here
Here's the example of a tagged link that was done appropriately
http://www.feedthebot.com/tools/if-modified/
here's an example of what happens when I put my homepage and with obviously no tag
Does your webpage support the If Modified Since HTTP header?
enter URL: example - www.feedthebot.comNo.
This website does not support the if modified since http header. Scroll down for details.Technical stuff:
This tool checked your HTTP headers and received this response ...
Server Response HTTP/1.1 200 OK
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: WP Engine/1.2.0
Date: Thu, 02 May 2013 03:57:11 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive
Keep-Alive: timeout=20
Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
Pragma: no-cache
X-Pingback: http://www.blueprintmarketing.com/xmlrpc.php
X-UA-Compatible: IE=Edge,chrome=1
X-Cacheable: SHORT
Vary: Accept-Encoding,Cookie
Cache-Control: max-age=600, must-revalidate
X-Cache: HIT: 13
X-Cache-Group: normal
X-Type: default
There does not appear to be a "last modified header response"Therefore, this tool has determined that this URL does not support if modified since.
Web hosts who do support If Modified Since...
We use and recommend using BlueHost for your hosting needs -
here is some more information on if modified since
http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-the-if-modified-since-http-header-still-relevant
it seems you want to pay a lot of attention when implementing it to the clock on the server as well as on the actual workstation.
http://redmine.lighttpd.net/boards/2/topics/1999
http://trac.nginx.org/nginx/ticket/93
I hope this is of help,
Tom
-
If you are just updating the title, or rewriting the content, then I would go with the same page instead of creating a new one.
IF-MODIFIED-SINCE is the way of telling spiders that the content has/hasn't changed. You can read more here: http://www.feedthebot.com/ifmodified.html
-
Actually does sound familiar somehow even though I know most people are creating new post stating about the change and point to the old one (if there is enough to cover).
What about poorly written articles? Improving titles?
Please explain what you mean by "IF-MODIFIED-SINCE"?
Thanks
-
Matt Cutts from Google pointed out in a WH video that you should update instead of creating new pages with only the updates.
You can point in the old page that the content was updated using "IF-MODIFIED-SINCE".
I can't find the video right now, but I am sure he did say that
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
-
Call for Help. Hit Badly with "Medic" and another 30% Loss with Sept 28th Update
Hi Everyone, I am not sure how this is all happening. We have been online for about 15 years, and now we are at our lowest amount of traffic in about 10 years. Our sites are www.bestpricenutrition.com and www.mysupplementstore.com. We sell commodity items, but I have focused on unique product descriptions, tons of UGC, blog posts and guides for awhile now and it has always done us well. Until as of late. This is what I feel led up to this, but I am hoping there is something I missed. May 1st, 2018: Migrated www.bestpricenutrition.com and www.mysupplementstore.com from Shopify. Similar sites, but almost all unique content. We purchased www.mysupplementstore.com about 8 years ago. A ton of traffic and sales, which is why we didn't just redirect it. Around May 25th: www.mysupplementstore.com took a big hit and lost almost 40% of its traffic. Nothing happened to www.bestpricenutrition.com, we actually increased traffic. Aug 1st Update: www.mysupplementstore.com lost another 25% of its traffic. www.bestpricenutrition.com lost about 40% of it's traffic. Sept 28th: Nothing happened to www.mysupplementstore.com, but www.bestpricenutrition.com lost another 30% of it's traffic. So I have been trying to figure out if there is anything technically wrong, but doesn't seem so. These are issues we discovered in August. During the migration, the reviews from each site were syndicated to both websites. There were 1000's. This was resolved in mid August. During the migration, the company doing the migration pushed our blog posts to both websites. 100's of blog posts duplicated to each website. This was resolved mid August. We found that a disgruntled employee instead writing unique content for our product pages, she was copying them one from another. This was about 100 product pages, which we have since resolved. What's Left I noticed on www.bestpricenutrition.com that we have 100's of blog posts that are getting hardly any traffic. I had trimmed www.mysupplementstore.com of this low traffic content. I am working on www.bestpricenutrition.com still. I have been in this industry since 2003, survived 2012, but have exhausted everything I know to figure this out. It's another sob story I know, but trying to keep everyone's job alive here, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vetofunk0 -
Internal Duplicate Content Question...
We are looking for an internal duplicate content checker that is capable of crawling a site that has over 300,000 pages. We have looked over Moz's duplicate content tool and it seems like it is somewhat limited in how deep it crawls. Are there any suggestions on the best "internal" duplicate content checker that crawls deep in a site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tdawson091 -
Geo-Redirect: good idea or not?
Hi Mozzers, The background: I have this very corporate .com domain which is used worldwide. Next to that, we have another .com domain which is specifically created for the US visitors. Within the organic rankings, we notice that our corporate domain is ranking much better in the US. Many visitors are arriving on this domain. As it is a corporate domain being used worldwide, they get lost. My questions: I know there are ways to redirect by location. Would it be smart to automatically redirect US visitors for the corporate domain to the commercial US-specific domain? Is it possible to only redirect US visitors and leave the website as it is for visitors from other countries. Won't this harm the corporate website (organically) worldwide? If this would be a good idea, any recommended plugins or concrete procedures? Thank you so much for helping me out!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE
Sander0 -
Is writing good content the best SEO?
Hi, After reading Mr. Shepard's amazing article on the 7 concepts of advanced on-page SEO (https://moz.com/blog/7-advanced-seo-concepts), I decided to share my own experience in hopes of helping others. I started doing legal SEO back in 2013. At the time I really didn't know much about SEO. My first client (my brother) had recently left the D.A.'s office to become a criminal defense attorney. I told him to write content for the following areas: domestic violence, sex crimes, and homicide. He finished his first content piece on domestic violence and I was not impressed. It seemed too unique, individualized, and lacked the "generic" feel that many of the currently ranking pages had. Please note that I don't mean "generic" in a negative way. I just mean that his content regarding domestic violence felt too personalized. Granted, his "personalized" approach came from a Deputy D.A. with over 13 years handling domestic violence, sex crimes, and murder cases. I was inclined to re-write his content, but lacking any experience in criminal law I really had no choice but to use it. IMPORTANT: Please note that I barely knew any SEO at the time (I hadn't even yet discovered MOZ), and my brother knew, and continues to know, absolutely nothing about SEO. He simply wrote the content from the perspective of an attorney who had spent the better part of 13 years handling these types of cases. The result? Google: "Los Angeles domestic violence lawyer/attorney", "Los Angeles sex crimes lawyer/attorney", and "Los Angeles homicide attorney." They have held those spots consistently since being published. I know that MANY other factors contribute to the success of content, but at the time I published them we had few links and very little "technical SEO." Unfortunately, I started learning "SEO" and applied standard SEO techniques to future content. The result? Never as good as the articles that were written with no SEO in mind. My purpose in writing this is to help anyone about to tackle a new project or revamp an existing site. Before getting too caught up in the keywords, H tags, and all the other stuff I seem to worry too much about, simply ask yourself - "is this great content?" Thanks again to the MOZ team for the great advice they have shared over the years. Honestly, I think I sometimes become overly reliant on SEO b/c it seems easier than taking the time to write a great piece of content. P.s. Any "SEO" stuff you see on the above-mentioned pages was done by me after the pages ranked well. P.p.s. I don't mean to imply that the above-mentioned pages are perfect, because they are not. My point is that content can rank well even without any emphasis on SEO, as long as the person writing it knows about the subject and takes the time to write something that readers find useful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14403 -
How does Google know if a backlink is good or not?
Hi, What does Google look at when assessing a backlink? How important is it to get a backlink from a website with relevant content? Ex: 1. Domain/Page Auth 80, website is not relevant. Does not use any of the words in your target term in any area of the website. 2. Domain/Page Auth 40, website is relevant. Uses the words in your target term multiple times across website. Which website example would benefit your SERP's more if you gained a backlink? (and if you can say, how much more would it benefit - low, medium, high).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
What About Google Panda Update 22?
Maybe I haven't found the threads or whatever but I haven't seen lots of posts about the latest Google Panda update from November 21-22 on SEOmoz. Panda 22 is not even listed here: http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change Until November 21st, Google killed 3 of 5 websites I own through their Panda updates (never got hit by Penguin updates as I got only original content), accounting for about 25% of my income. Fortunately, the 2 remaining websites gained more traffic throughout the summer of 2012 so my income almost got back to 100% even though I got the "Unnatural Links" warning in Google Webmaster Tools in July. Since then, I did a huge link cleanup and according to the Link Detox Tool (from another SEO service), the number of "toxic links" went from about 350 to 50. Back link reports is as follow: 8% (52) Toxic Links; 57% (382) Suspicious Links; 35% (235) Healthy Links; Out of the 382 suspicious, most of them are coming from the same domain and they are all directories to which my website has been submitted automatically (not using any specific keyword anchor). On the opposite, healthy links are coming from different domains so I like to think they have a stronger impact than suspicious links. That said, my two remaining websites were still doing well until November 21 where it got hit by the Panda. Now traffic has dropped by 55% and income has dropped by 75% (yes I'll have to look for a job within a year if I don't fix this). (I want to add that none of my websites are "thin websites". One has over 1500 pages of content and the other has about 500 pages. All websites have content added 3 to 5 times a week.) What I don't get is that all my "money keywords" are still ranked in the top 10 results on Google according to multiple tools / services I use, yet the impressions dropped from 50% to 75% for those keywords?!? I have a feeling that this time it's not only a drop in ranking. There's a drop in impressions caused by something else. Is it caused by emphasis on local search? Are they showing more ads and less organic results? But here's the "funny part": For the last 5 years, I was never able to advertise my website on Google Adwords. Each time, I got a quality score of about 4/10 only to see it drop to 1/10 within a few hours of launching the campaign. On November 22nd, I build new PPC campaigns based on the exact same PPC campaigns I had the past (same keywords, same ads, same landing pages). Guess what? Now the quality score is between 7/10 and 10/10 (most of them have 10/10) for the exact same PPC campaign! What a "coincidence" huh?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740 -
Launching a new site with old, new and updated content: What’s best practice?
Hi all, We are launching a new site soon and I’d like your opinion on best practice related to its content. We will be retaining some pages and content (although the URLs might change a bit as I intend to replace under-scores with hyphens and remove .asp from some extensions in order to standardise a currently uneven URL structuring). I will also be adding a lot of new pages with new content, along with amend some pages and their content (and amend URLs again if need be), and a few pages are going to be done away with all together. Any advice from those who’ve done the same in the past as to how best to proceed? Does the URL rewriting sound OK to do in conjunction with adding and amending content? Cheers, Dave
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Martin_S0 -
Duplicate Content On A Subdomain
Hi, We have a client who is currently close to completing a site specifically aimed at the UK market (they're doing this in-house so we've had no say in how it will work). The site will almost be a duplicate (in terms of content, targeted keywords etc.) of a section of the main site (that sits on the root domain) - the main site is targeted toward the US. The only difference will be certain spellings and currency type. If this new UK site were to sit on a sub domain of the main site, which is a .com, will this cause duplicate content issues? I know that there wouldn't be an issue if the new site were to be on a separate .co.uk domain (according to Matt Cutts), but it looks like the client wants it to be on a sub domain. Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasarrow0