Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How often should I update the content on my pages?
-
I have started dropping on my rankings - due to lack of time after having a baby. I'm still managing to blog but I'm wondering if I update the content on my pages will that help?
All my Meta tags and page descriptions were updated over a year ago - do I need to update these too?
We were ranking in the top spots for a good few years, but we're slowly falling
Please give me any advice to keep us from falling even further.
I have claimed all my listings, and try to add new links once a month. I share my blog to all social sites and work hard to get Google reviews, we have 53 which is higher than any of our competitors.
Any other ideas? Have I missed something that Google is looking for nowadays? Many thanks
-
Great advice here, I'm with casey on constant updating and that's a solid article from Herb.
But for me you're asking the wrong question. Sure updating content is great but you should really be testing it. So test meta descriptions, H1's and other elements using a tool (there's this great keyword tool I believe it's called MOZ lol - lots of chat about that lately - they've really made some great changes.)
But in the interests of openness I also use SEM Rush and GOOGLE that's the best keyword tool out there. Just get googling and see what sorts of articles are overtaking you and model them and make better versions.
Having a young kid (congrats) means you're tired and creativity is really hard when you're tired and stressed - even for very creative people. So model the articles of others and use the keyword suggestions and volumes as a guide.
But always be testing and tweaking. Add just a paragraph and revisit and change up some words and phrases and keep it fresh. Use the date in the Meta Description. CTR in the SERPS is really important and If I see 2018 up there i'm going to click on it.
Don't just add '2018' to everything though because google will catch you out. you actually need to add some contemporary stuff in there and it will revitalise and refresh the content.
Also remember that there have been lots of changes at google lately. So your drop in traffic might be external ranking factors bumping other sites up because google can understand them better and is better able to get good user feedback from Chrome.
Also be granular about it. Ask yourself of each article, "does this answer the question?" Is it up to date and is it correctly optimised using the keywords that are coming up in your research.
The best SEO tool in the world is the 100 billion neurons sitting on your shoulders. Use that tool first and foremost
-
Congrats on the little one Lauren! Time is always a factor!
To be honest with you, I’m regularly updating and tweaking old content to get better results. Whether it’s a simple title tag change or adding more content to the page as I‘ve realised website visitors will benefit from the extra info.
Is your traffic also dropping? If so it might be worth investigating the following:
-
New competitors in the SERPs
-
Are featured snippets now showing for your key terms? If so you may need to review your structured data (Moz recenrly did a great 3 part Whiteboard Friday series on these)
I‘d also highly recommend watching/reading the below resources:
- https://neilpatel.com/blog/#p-59557
- https://moz.com/blog/seo-rankings-drop-guide
I hope this somewhat helps. Goodluck Lauren
-
-
Hi Lauren;
First of all, congratulations on the birth of you child! You now have at least two babies that need love and feeding
To answer your question on how often to update your content, the answer is, it depends. This is a question that I get all the time, and happen to have done a blog post on last month. Here it is, and I hope it is helpful. I find that lots of time folks don't know what to post as much as how often.
https://invitethemhome.com/how-often-should-you-update-your-content/
If you have any questions or comments let me know and I will try to help.
Take care,
Herb
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
-
Do you think profanity in the content can harm a site's rankings?
In my early 20's I authored an ebook that provides men with natural ways to improve their ahem... "bedroom performance". I'm now in my mid 30s, and while it's not such an enthralling topic, the thing makes me 80 or so bucks a day on good days, and it actually works. I update the blog from time to time and build links to it on occasion from good sources. I've carried my SEO knowledge to a more "reputable" business, but this project is still interesting to me, because it's fully mine. I am more interested in getting it to rank and convert than anything, but following the same techniques that are working to grow the other business, this one continues to tank. Disavow bad links, prune thin content.. no difference. However, one thing I just noticed now are my search queries in the reports. When I first started blogging on this, I was real loose with my tongue, and spoke quite frankly (and dirty to various degrees). I'm much more refined and professional in how I write now. However, the queries I'm ranking for... a lot of d words, c words (in the sex sense)... sounds almost pornographic. Think Google may be seeing this, and putting me lower in rankings or in some sort of lower level category because of it? Heard anything about google penalizing for profanity? I guess in this time of authority and trust, that can hurt both of those... but I wonder if anyone's heard any actual confirmation of this or has any experience with this? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | DavidCapital0 -
Is it necessary to have unique H1's for pages in a pagination series (i.e. blog)?
A content issue that we're experiencing includes duplicate H1 issues within pages in a pagination series (i.e. blog). Does each separate page within the pagination need a unique H1 tag, or, since each page has unique content (different blog snippets on each page), is it safe to disregard this? Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | BopDesign0 -
Our Sites Organic Traffic Went Down Significantly After The June Core Algorithm Update, What Can I Do?
After the June Core Algorithim Update, the site suffered a loss of about 30-35% of traffic. My suggestions to try to get traffic back up have been to add metadata (since the majority of our content is lacking it), as well ask linking if possible, adding keywords to alt images, expanding and adding content as it's thin content wise. I know that from a technical standpoint there are a lot of fixes we can implement, but I do not want to suggest anything as we are onboarding an SEO agency soon. Last week, I saw that traffic for the site went back to "normal" for one day and then saw a dip of 30% the next day. Despite my efforts, traffic has been up and down, but the majority of organic traffic has dipped overall this month. I have been told by my company that I am not doing a good job of getting numbers back up, and have been given a warning stating that I need to increase traffic by 25% by the end of the month and keep it steady, or else. Does anyone have any suggestions? Is it realistic and/or possible to reach that goal?
Algorithm Updates | | NBJ_SM2 -
On page vs Off page vs Technical SEO: Priority, easy to handle, easy to measure.
Hi community, I am just trying to figure out which can be priority in on page, off page and technical SEO. Which one you prefer to go first? Which one is easy to handle? Which one is easy to measure? Your opinions and suggestions please. Expecting more realistic answers rather than usual check list. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Log-in page ranking instead of homepage due to high traffic on login page! How to avoid?
Hi all, Our log-in page is ranking in SERP instead of homepage and some times both pages rank for the primary keyword we targeted. We have even dropped. I am looking for a solution for this. Three points here to consider is: Our log-in page is the most visited page and landing page on the website. Even there is the primary keyword in this page or not; same scenario continues Log-in page is the first link bots touch when they crawling any page of our website as log-in page is linked on top navigation menu If we move login page to sub-domain, will it works? I am worrying that we loose so much traffic to our website which will be taken away from log-in page sub domain Please guide with your valuable suggestions. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Ranking For Synonyms Without Creating Duplicate Content.
We have 2 keywords that are synonyms we really need to rank for as they are pretty much interchangeable terms. We will refer to the terms as Synonym A and Synonym B. Our site ranks very well for Synonym A but not for Synonym B. Both of these terms carry the same meaning, but the search results are very different. We actively optimize for Synonym A because it has the higher search volume of the 2 terms. We had hoped that Synonym B would get similar rankings due to the fact that the terms are so similar, but that did not pan out for us. We have lots of content that uses Synonym A predominantly and some that uses Synonym B. We know that good content around Synonym B would help, but we fear that it may be seen as duplicate if we create a piece that’s “Top 10 Synonym B” because we already have that piece for Synonym A. We also don’t want to make too many changes to our existing content in fear we may lose our great ranking for Synonym A. Has anyone run into this issue before, or does anyone have any ideas of things we can do to increase our position for Synonym B?
Algorithm Updates | | Fuel0 -
Does omitted results shown by Google always mean that website has duplicate content?
Google search results for a particular query was appearing in top 10 results but now the page appears but only after clicking on the " omitted results by google." My website lists different businesses in a particular locality and sometimes results for different localities are same because we show results from nearby area if number of businesses in that locality (search by users) are less then 15. Will this be considered as "duplicate content"? If yes then what steps can be taken to resolve this issue?
Algorithm Updates | | prsntsnh0 -
Republish An Updated Blog or not?
We need to update one of our older posts (a new federal ruling came down that now applies) but do I just update it or should I republish it? I know that just republishing something that hasn't been changed, can get you flagged, but if it's an update, I would think that would be appropriate to republish. I'd just like some guidance before I proceed. Thanks and Happy Friday! Ruben
Algorithm Updates | | KempRugeLawGroup0