Content update on 24hr schedule
-
Hello!
I have a website with over 1300 landings pages for specific products. These individual pages update on a 24hr cycle through out API. Our API pulls reviews/ratings from other sources and then writes/updates that content onto the page.
-
Is that 'bad"? Can that be viewed as spammy or dangerous in the eyes of google? (My first thought is no, its fine)
-
Is there such a thing as "too much content". For example if we are adding roughly 20 articles to our site a week, is that ok? (I know news websites add much more than that on a daily basis but I just figured I would ask)
-
On that note, would it be better to stagger our posting? For example 20 articles each week for a total of 80 articles, or 80 articles once a month? (I feel like trickle posting is probably preferable but I figured I would ask.)
-
Is there any negatives to the process of an API writing/updating content? Should we have 800+ words of static content on each page?
Thank you all mozzers!
-
-
When you say 1300 landing pages are coming online every night that doesn't mean 1300 new pages are being created does it? Based on the rest of your comment I'm taking it to mean that 1300 pages, which were already live and accessible to Google, are being updated and the content is changing if appropriate.
In terms of the specific situation I describe above, that should be fine - there shouldn't be a problem with having a system for keeping your site up-to-date. However, each of the below things, if true, would be a problem;
-
You are adding 1300 new pages to your site every night
-
This would be a huge increase for most sites, particularly if it was happening every night, but as I say above I don't think this is the case
-
You are actually scraping key information to include on your site
-
You mention an API so it may be that users are submitting this content to your site for you to use but if you are scraping the descriptions from some sites, and reviews from others that is what would be viewed as spammy and it seems like the biggest point of risk I've seen in this thread.
-
-
Something else occurred to me. So, our api rewrites EVERYTHING every night. So technically 1300 landing pages are coming online EVERY night, and the content isn't really changing. If that a problem?
To sorta explain, this is a review site for other websites/apps. Our API scrapes the description from the app/site, as well as ratings from app stores etc and then publishes that onto our page. So, generally the content isnt really changing, its just updating. Thoughts on that?
-
Thank you!!! Thats great info.
-
Hi,
As said below by Robin... I'm suggesting you think about the frequency that would be better for users/readers/clients. In the end, Google is another reader.
Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR -
Hi, I think you've already got a couple of good answers here but just to throw in my thoughts; to me this would all come down to how much value you're getting for the volume of content you're creating.
It sounds to me like you have 1.3k product landing pages, and you're producing 80 articles a month, plus maybe you're indexing the review pages too?
I think frequency here becomes secondary to how much each of these things are adding. If you are indexing the reviews pages for specific products, those pages could just be diluting your site equity. Unless they are performing a valuable function I'd consider canonicalising them to the product pages. As the others have said, having product pages that regularly update with new reviews shouldn't be a problem but with all the content you're adding to the site you could be relying on Google indexing these changes far more quickly than it actually is.
If you're adding a large number of articles every month - are those articles cannibalising other pages, or each other? The way I'd try to gauge if it's too much is whether the pages are getting traffic, whether you're having a lot of flip-flopping in the keywords you're targeting, and whether you're starting to get issues with Google indexing all of your pages. Similar to the review pages, if the articles are providing value to your readers, getting you links or getting you a decent amount of traffic then grand, if they aren't generating much I'd consider producing less or removing/redirecting poorly performing articles after a little while to preserve site equity and help focus Google's crawl.
On the note of posting frequency, I would agree with Gaston that it's about what's right for your readers. If a lot of article-worthy content comes out at the same time, I'd post about it then and there, if this is just content you're coming up with and adding and timing doesn't matter, spreading it throughout the month makes sense in terms of staying fresh, getting the articles indexed, and honestly not having to rush deadlines/delay release.
-
Yeah so basically we are bumping up all the static content on our review pages. The reviews are updating daily. And to clarify when you say "wouldn't work in your favor" you mean we aren't getting any benefit from the content, it isn't negatively impacting us correct?
-
Thank you very much! Can you clarify number 3?
-
1. No, not really. It mostly depends on the percentage of content that isn't yours and can be viewed somewhere else. If reviews are 90% of the page and they're original content from another site that won't work in your favor though. But in this case, I'm assuming you're working around that.
2. No.
3. I would say No.
4. It depends, as long as you're not creating duplicate content at scale you should be fine.
-
Hi there!
- No, at all. There is no issue there, as long as changes do make sense.
- Noup, there is no such thing as "too much content".
- Think to Google other of your readers/clients. Wich frequency would be better for them?
- No, there aren't any negatives as long as you keep the content coherent and don't create duplicate content
Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR
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
-
Medical / Health Content Authority - Content Mix Question
Greetings, I have an interesting challenge for you. Well, I suppose "interesting" is an understatement, but here goes. Our company is a women's health site. However, over the years our content mix has grown to nearly 50/50 between unique health / medical content and general lifestyle/DIY/well being content (non-health). Basically, there is a "great divide" between health and non-health content. As you can imagine, this has put a serious damper on gaining ground with our medical / health organic traffic. It's my understanding that Google does not see us as an authority site with regard to medical / health content since we "have two faces" in the eyes of Google. My recommendation is to create a new domain and separate the content entirely so that one domain is focused exclusively on health / medical while the other focuses on general lifestyle/DIY/well being. Because health / medical pages undergo an additional level of scrutiny per Google - YMYL pages - it seems to me the only way to make serious ground in this hyper-competitive vertical is to be laser targeted with our health/medical content. I see no other way. Am I thinking clearly here, or have I totally gone insane? Thanks in advance for any reply. Kind regards, Eric
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_Lifescript0 -
Social Media Content Duplicacy?
Since, Social media signals are taken into account for SEO activities. Do you think that Social Profiles account content will also be taken into account? Or is it that how many fans, share, likes a profile has gets into account for SEO activities. Like more number of fans the higher the social value for SEO? Secondly, if someone re-tweets or shares. The content gets duplicated into number of profiles re-tweeted or shared? & what we even do is copy content from other pages, do slight changes & post on our pages? Do you think it will affect the SEO part?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
Duplicate content on yearly product models.
TL;DR - Is creating a page that has 80% of duplicated content from the past year's product model where 20% is about the new model changes going to be detrimental to duplicate content issues. Is there a better way to update minor yearly model changes and not have duplicated content? Full Question - We create landing pages for yearly products. Some years the models change drastically and other years there are only a few minor changes. The years where the product features change significantly is not an issue, it's when there isn't much of a change to the product description & I want to still rank on the new year searches. Since I don't want duplicate content by just adding the last year's model content to a new page and just changing the year (2013 to 2014) because there isn't much change with the model, I thought perhaps we could write a small paragraph describing the changes & then including the last year's description of the product. Since 80% of the content on the page will be duplicated from the last year's model, how detrimental do you think this would be for a duplicate content issue? The reason I'm leaving the old model up is to maintain the authority that page has and to still rank on the old model which is still sold. Does anyone else have any other better idea other than re-writing the same information over again in a different way with the few minor changes to the product added in.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DCochrane0 -
How to best handle expired content?
Similar to the eBay situation with "expired" content, what is the best way to approach this? Here are a few examples. With an e-commerce site, for a seasonal category of "Christmas" .. what's the best way to handle this category page after it's no longer valid? 404? 301? leave it as-is and date it by year? Another example. If I have an RSS feed of videos from a big provider, say Vevo, what happens when Vevo tells me to "expire" a video that it's no longer available? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JDatSB0 -
Optimize the category page or a content page?
Hi, We wish to start ranking on a specific keyword ("log house prices" in italian). We have two options on what pages we should optimize for this keyword: A long content page (1000+ words with images) Log houses category page, optimized for the keyword (we have 50+ houses on this page, together with a short price summary). I would think that we have better chances with ranking with option nr.2 , but then we can't use that page for ranking with a more short-tail keyword (like "log houses"). What would you suggest? Is there maybe a third option for this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohanMattisson0 -
Duplicate Content in News Section
Our clients site is in the hunting niche. According to webmaster tools there are over 32,000 indexed pages. In the new section that are 300-400 news posts where over the course of a about 5 years they manually copied relevant Press Releases from different state natural resources websites (ex. http://gfp.sd.gov/news/default.aspx). This content is relevant to the site visitors but it is not unique. We have since begun posting unique new posts but I am wondering if anything should be done with these old news posts that aren't unique? Should I use the rel="canonical tag or noindex tag for each of these pages? Or do you have another suggestion?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rise10 -
Duplicate Content Question
My client's website is for an organization that is part of a larger organization - which has it's own website. We were given permission to use content from the larger organization's site on my client's redesigned site. The SEs will deem this as duplicate content, right? I can "re-write" the content for the new site, but it will still be closely based on the original content from the larger organization's site, due to the scientific/medical nature of the subject material. Is there a way around this dilemma so I do not get penalized? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mills1 -
How Many Words in Content for Good SEO?
I have heard it's best to have 400+ words of content for strong SEO per page. I believe this is true for the most. I have a project in mind, however, that I am considering doing 100-200 words of content per page. This is for a glossary of terms for my industry, where I have a unique page for each term that describes what that term means w/ 1 image and a few links to related products. Is having just 100-200 words going to be enough? Each page will still be unique, original content. Or is it best to really try for longer articles? In other words, is there a general rule for # of words per page for search engines to see the page as valuable and unique and to give it good ranking? Give me a BIG THUMBS UP if you found this question useful. It won't cost you anything! Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | applesofgold0