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
-
SEO Effect of inserting No indexed Contents in normal Pages (Nextgen Gallery)
Hello Dear Community, I'm running a photography website and have a question about the indexability of "No indexed Content" inserted on indexable pages. Background : I read everywhere that best practice is to "no index" all useless pages with few content, what I did with Yoast plugin : I no indexed all my nextgen galleries and "ngg_tags" since they create single pages for every photo, tags or slideshow. I did the same for all my porfolio-posts, price lists, testimonials and so on... Nevertheless, I inserted these galleries and portfolios on SEO optimized page for my target keywords. + Nextgen plugin automatically adds these images in the page sitemap. My idea is to have only my Seo optimized page showing in Google and not the others. Problem: I've been checking the results in Google Search Console, filtering by images : I discovered that most of the images featured in these Masonry galleries are not showing in google, and actually almost all the images indexed are the Wordpress from media gallery. I double checked with Screaming Frog, and the software doesn"t see images on these pages. My question is: Is the low indexablilty of these contents are related to the No indexation of the original contents ??? Does somebody has experienced the same issue that these contents doesn't show on Google ? in advance many thanks for your help
Reporting & Analytics | | TristanAventure0 -
How can I overwrite previously imported cost data in Google Analytics?
I choose the overwrite option but it keeps adding the costs to the existing costs. When i select that radio button and click done, that option does not appear on the summary screen. That section next to Import Behavior is blank.
Reporting & Analytics | | JGB5550 -
Google Analytics is treating my blog like all the content is just on the home page.
Hello all, I installed Google Analytics on a main website and a blog (blog.travelexinsurance.com) While it appears to be tracking correctly (and when I test it in real time it shows that I'm visiting) but it is treating the entire blog as though it's one page. So I can't see data on blog post X. All I see is that X visitors came to my blog in aggregate. So I see blog.travelex.com has 999 visitors, but it doesn't show that /travel-luggage got 50 visits, while /insurace-tips got 75 and so forth. I assume I screwed up the tracking somehow, but can't figure out where I went wrong. Tracking on the main domain works just fine. It's specific to the blog.
Reporting & Analytics | | Patrick_G0 -
Pages with Duplicate Page Content
Hi Just started use the Moz and got an analytics report today! There about 104 duplicate pages apparently, the problem is that they are not duplicates, but just the way the page has been listed with a description! The site is an Opencart and every page as got the name of the site followed by the product name for the page! How do you correct this issue?? Thank for your help
Reporting & Analytics | | DRSMPR1 -
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 -
Duplicate content and ways to deal with it.
Problem I queried back a year for the portal and we can see below that the SEO juice is split between the upper and lowercase. You can see the issue in the attached images. http://i.imgur.com/OXnPp.png Solutions: 1) Quick: Change the link on the pages above to be lowercase 2) Use canonical link tag http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps The tag is part of the HTML header on a web page, the same section you'd find the Title attribute and Meta Description tag. In fact, this tag isn't new, but like nofollow, simply uses a new rel parameter. For example: http://www.darden.virginia.edu/MBA" /> ''This would tell Yahoo!, Live & Google that the page in question should be treated as though it were a copy of the URL http://www.darden.virginia.edu/MBA and that all of the link & content metrics the engines apply should technically flow back to that URL.'' 3) See if there is any Google Analytics filters at the site level I can apply. I will check into this and get back to you. What do you all think?????? OXnPp voJdp.png OXnPp.png
Reporting & Analytics | | Darden0 -
How can you tell if your new content has been indexed?
Other than simply doing a search in each case, is there any way I can tell (in Webmaster Tools, for example) if the 500-1000 new pages of content I have added have been indexed and are now appearing in search results? My traffic hasn't risen much, but I know at least a few of them are in there... How can I tell when they're all in?
Reporting & Analytics | | corp08030 -
Campaign tracking and duplicate content
Hi all, When you set up campaign tracking in Google Analytics you get something like this "?variable=value parameters" in the URL. If you place such a link on your site as an internal link, will it be considered as a different URL and will have its own link value? The question I have is, since Google knows it's a Google link and knows the original URL (by stripping the tags), does it pass link value to the original URL? If not, what can be done to pass link value? Thanks in advance. Henry
Reporting & Analytics | | hnydnn0