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 -
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 -
Ahrefs - What Causes a Drastic Loss in Referring Pages?
While I was doing research on UK Flower companies I noticed that one particular domain had great rankings (top 3), but has slid quite a bit down to page two. After investigating further I noticed that they had a drastic loss of referring pages, but an increase in total referring domains. See this screenshot from ahrefs. I took a look at their historical rankings (got them from the original SEO provider's portfolio) and compared it to the Wayback Machine. There did not seem to be any drastic changes in the site structure. My question is what would cause such a dramatic loss in total referring pages while showing a dramatic increase in referring domains? It appears that the SEO company was trying rebound from the loss of links though. Any thoughts on why this might happen? 56VD5jD
Algorithm Updates | | AaronHenry0 -
Should my canonical tags point to the category page or the filter result page?
Hi Moz, I'm working on an ecommerce site with categories, filter options, and sort options – teacherexpress.scholastic.com. Should I have canonical tags from all filter and sort options point to the category page like gap.com and llbean.com? or have all sort options point to the filtered page URL like kohls.com? I was under the impression that to use a canonical tag, the pages have to have the same content, meaning that Gap and L.L. Bean would be using canonical tags incorrectly. Using a filter changes the content, whereas using a sort option just changes the order. What would be the best way to deal with duplicate content for this site? Thanks for reading!
Algorithm Updates | | DA20130 -
Guest Blog Post or Article Content Should be Do-Follow or No-Follow Link ? Help Plz !
Many SEO writers and blogs after Google Matt Cutt said, You should not allow no-follow link in Guest Post. What should we do. ? I am allowing Guest post - what they ask in return a do-follow link to their site or blog. other articles or post i wrote about inspiration collected from different source or single portfolio site - i credit them(as blogger - we should respect them). What i am doing right or wrong ? Please advise and help me on this ! http://searchengineland.com/google-guest-blogging-for-links-you-better-nofollow-those-links-166218
Algorithm Updates | | Esaky0 -
Why has my homepage been replaced in Google by my Facebook page?
Hi. I was wondering if others have had this happen to them. Lately, I've noticed that on a couple of my sites the homepage no longer appears in the Google SERP. Instead, a Facebook page I've created appears in the position the homepage used to get. My subpages still get listed in Google--just not the homepage. Obviously, I'd prefer that both the homepage and Facebook page appear. Any thoughts on what's going on? Thanks for your help!
Algorithm Updates | | TuxedoCat0 -
Does google index non-public pages ie. members logged in page
hi, I was trying to locate resources on the topics regarding how much the google bot indexes in order to qualify a 'good' site on their engine. For example, our site has many pages that are associated with logged in users and not available to the public until they acquire a login username and password. Although those pages show up in google analytics, they should not be made public in the google index which is what happens. In light of Google trying to qualify a site according to how 'engaged' a user is on the site, I would feel that the activities on those member pages are very important. Can anyone offer suggestions on how Google treats those pages since we are planning to do further SEO optimization of those pages. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | jumpdates0 -
Using Brand Name in Page titles
Is it a good practice to append our brand name at the end of every page title? We have a very strong brand name but it is also long. Right now what we are doing is saying: Product Name | Long brand name here Product Category | Long brand name here Is this the right way to do it or should we just be going with ONLY the product and category names in our page titles? Right now we often exceed the 70 character recommendation limit.
Algorithm Updates | | mlentner1