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
-
Same content, different languages. Duplicate content issue? | international SEO
Hi, If the "content" is the same, but is written in different languages, will Google see the articles as duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chalet
If google won't see it as duplicate content. What is the profit of implementing the alternate lang tag?Kind regards,Jeroen0 -
What is considered duplicate content?
Hi, We are working on a product page for bespoke camper vans: http://www.broadlane.co.uk/campervans/vw-campers/bespoke-campers . At the moment there is only one page but we are planning add similar pages for other brands of camper vans. Each page will receive its specifically targeted content however the 'Model choice' cart at the bottom (giving you the choice to select the internal structure of the van) will remain the same across all pages. Will this be considered as duplicate content? And if this is a case, what would be the ideal solution to limit penalty risk: A rel canonical tag seems wrong for this, as there is no original item as such. Would an iFrame around the 'model choice' enable us to isolate the content from being indexed at the same time than the page? Thanks, Celine
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | A_Q0 -
Is This Considered Duplicate Content?
My site has entered SEO hell and I am not sure how to fix it. Up until 18 months ago I had tremendous success on Google and Bing and now my website appears below my Facebook page for the term "Direct Mail Raleigh." What makes it even more frustrating is my competitors have done no SEO and they are dominating this keyword. I thought that the issue was due to harmful inbound links and two months ago I disavowed ones that were clearly spam. Somehow my site has actually gone down! I have a blog that I have updated infrequently and I do not know if it I am getting punished for duplicate content. On Google Webmaster Tools it says I have 279 crawled and indexed pages. Yesterday when I ran the MOZ crawl check I was amazed to find 1150 different webpages on my site. Despite the fact that it does not appear on the webmaster tools I have three different webpages due to the format that the Wordpress blog was created: "http://www.marketplace-solutions.com/report/part2leadershi/", "http://www.marketplace-solutions.com/report/page/91/" and "http://www.marketplace-solutions.com/report/category/competent-leadership/page/3/" What does not make sense to me is why Google only indexed 279 webpages AND why MOZ did not identify these three webpages as duplicate content with the Crawl Test Tool. Does anyone have any ideas? Would it be as easy as creating a massive robot.txt file and just putting 2 of the 3 URLs in that file? Thank you for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DR700950 -
Can i get banned for my content?
Last night all our indexed pages are gone from google. Completely deindexed - banned. Links could not cause it, all of them are related, anchors diversified and spam is never used. Content is the same like our other website has, just some small changes. First stronger website is working as usual. So can it be that duplicate content caused a complete ban? (Website is 6 months old. Content has never been properly indexed, due to same reasons i think. Last week we made changes, ant it started to get indexed quite well until tonight..)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bele0 -
New Google Update?
Hey guys, So I have noticed a few of my clients rankings drop suddenly as of last week. They went from page 1 to page 4 and I they have been on page 1 for years, it happened around 17/01/2013. Anyone heard anything about a new update? Sample URL & Keyword: http://www.childrensfunkyfurniture.com/childrens-beds Childrens Beds Your help would be appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conversiontactics0 -
Need help with duplicate content. Same content; different locations.
We have 2 sites that will have duplicate content (e.g., one company that sells the same products under two different brand names for legal reasons). The two companies are in different geographical areas, but the client will put the same content on each page because they're the same product. What is the best way to handle this? Thanks a lot.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rocket.Fuel0 -
How Bad is it to Not Have a Home Page?
The site I'm currently developing is far different than any other project I've every worked on in that search traffic is likely to represent only a very small percentage of the total traffic. Because of this, I want to make sure I optimize the site for the people clicking from Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc more so than the BIG G. I can't for the life of me think of a reason to have a home page other than for SEO purposes. I'd much rather throw the user directly into the experience than have him be distracted by a home page. At the same time, I'd like to salvage any search engine traffic that I can. My plan is to 301 redirect chucklebot.com/ to /funny-memes/SOME_RANDOM_IMAGE and then put the content of the current home page at /about. Does that kill any possibility of the site ranking well? Or can the subpages (eg /meme-generator) still rank well if they are properly optimized? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PatrickGriffith0 -
Geo-tagging using cookie - Is it Good or Bad for Rankings
We have a fairly large site which does a cookie-based 302 redirect to the the specific city page if someone types in the Home page URL. Though if the cookie is not available (first time user) it goes to the Homepage and asks user to select the city as our services are city specific. Everything is working fine with this setup. Though our tech team now wants to display the contents of city page on homepage URL itself if the cookie is available without 302 redirecting to new URL. Though no-cookie available scenario remains unchanged. Technically, I think this change should work fine without any ranking issues as still the first time users see the actual homepage as does Googlebot. Please confirm possible issues in rankings with this change from your experiences as based upon city present in the cookie homepage will display different content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webmaster_SEO0