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.
Does Hiding the article´s date in a blog affect SEO?
-
We are running a blog and would like to hide date, as users find the article less interesting if they are dated more than 2 years ago.
Will hiding the article´s date in a blog affecto SEO?
Thanks in advance
-
I can answer that question as I just did an experiment on this which you can review here: http://www.rlmseo.com/blog/seo-impact-blog-post-dates/
The summary is this:
Assuming no displayed date as a baseline, recent dates (not sure exactly how recent - looks like up to 3-12 months but probably depends on industry, etc) will boost traffic significantly.
Compared to the baseline, distant past publish dates will reduce traffic a good bit.
I would recommend this:
- Display update date instead of publish date.
- If a post is still relevant, update it, maybe even add a disclaimer for your users that the post was first published on x date but has been updated and is current.
We've seen dramatic traffic increases with this strategy and it ensures people know how relevant your post is, which is actually more important than the publish date.
-
Hi,
I'm with Philip on doing this selectively. Many users find content hard to digest in the manner it was intended when they have no idea if it was written in 2006 or 2014. If your industry is one where time really doesn't matter or change anything, this may be different. From an SEO point of view, Google still knows when it first crawled a piece of content, so not including a date won't fool Google into believing the content is fresh when it's not.
I agree that creating evergreen content where appropriate is also a good move - articles, case studies, etc. that can be updated where appropriate (and blogged about + linked to to spur re-indexing).
If you see a marked drop off in traffic to or engagement in a post from 2+ years ago that used to be successful for the site, I'd consider re-writing the post with a current slant, linking to the old one from the post and being upfront about the fact that you're refreshing an old article. You can move engagement to the new post. If there really isn't anything new to say about the subject, you can still cover it again "for new readers" and redirect the old post to the new one, canonicalise it or leave it as is if there are no duplicate content issues.
-
I wouldn't recommend hiding the date because you don't want users to know that the content is old. What about when you publish something fresh and someone lands on the page but they can't find a date? They won't know how up to date that information is. I think a lot of people look for dates on blog posts, and rightfully so. They want to see that they're getting good information. You're right, if something is 2+ years old they might look for something more up to date. But you can update old blog posts and re-date them. Add something new to it, make some changes, and update the date.
Imagine an SEO strategy blog that didn't date the posts. You would be doing your visitors a complete disservice by hiding the date. You might have a post all about article directory submissions and they won't see that it's from 2008. That's not enhancing user experience, and people won't be happy with you.
Old content won't always be a bad thing. Read #4, "Burstiness," on this blog post: http://www.seobythesea.com/2014/03/incomplete-google-ranking-signals-1/
It's really interesting and a great read about how older content will sometimes receive the boost in rankings over fresh content.
EDIT: I'd like to add that it's completely okay to hide the date in some circumstances. You might have some sort of evergreen content that truly will stand the test of time and info may not ever, or rarely, change on the topic. For instance, if you were writing a blog post about how to improve your basketball shot. Who cares if the post is from 2006? In that case, hiding the date isn't going to reduce the overall user experience.
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
-
Will shortening down the amount of text on my pages affect it's SEO performance?
My website has several pages with a lot of text that becomes pretty boring. I'm looking at shortening down the amount of copy on each page but then within the updated, shortened copy, integrating more target keywords naturally. Will shortening down the current copy have a negative effect on my SEO performance?
On-Page Optimization | | Liquid20150 -
Stolen Content reposted on other sites. How does this affect ranking?
Visitors often copy and paste my content and post it elsewhere... on Facebook, on Tumblr, on forums and sometimes on competing websites... but they don't link to me. How does Google treat this duplicated content? What is the best way to handle it? File DCMA claims or ask them for a link?
On-Page Optimization | | brianflannery0 -
Does Rel=canonical affect google shopping feed?
I have a client who gets a good portion of their sales (~40%) from Google Product Feeds, and for those they want each (Product X Quantity) to have it’s own SKU, as they often get 3 listings in a given Google shopping query, i.e. 2,4,8 units of a given product. However, we are worried about this creating duplicate content on the search side. Do you know if we could rel=canonical on the site without messing with their google shopping results? The crux of the issue is that they want the products to appear distinct for the product feed, and unified for the web so as not to dilute. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | VISISEEKINC0 -
SEO for Online Auto Parts Store
I'm currently doing an audit for an online auto parts store and am having a hard time wrapping my head around their duplicate content issue. The current set up is this: The catalogue starts with the user selecting their year of vehicle They then choose their brand (so each of the year pages have listed every single brand of car, creating duplicate content) They then choose their model of car and then the engine And then this takes them to a page listing every type/category of product they sell (so each and every model type/engine size has the exact same content!) This is amounting to literally thousands of pages being seen as duplicates It's a giant mess. Is using rel=canonical the best thing to do? I'm having a hard time seeing a logical way of structuring the site to avoid this issue. Anyone have any ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
Bullet points good or bad for seo?
Hi Everyone, After a body of unique content of say 50 words, will Google then penalise you for adding bullet points which will then be duplicated across all those products (say 100 products)? http://www.polesandblinds.com/acacia-teal-roller-blind/? Look forward to your comments, good or bad, Thanks Jonathan
On-Page Optimization | | JonnytheB0 -
Blog on Subdomain vs. Subdirectory - Best Practices
Hi, I have recently been told that it no longer impacts authority or rankings if a blog is set up on a subdomain (blog.domain.com) rather than a subdirectory (/blog). However, I am reluctant to do so because I remember learning how blog subdomains did not adhere to SEO best practices. Would anyone be able to shed some light on the latest SEO best practices regarding this topic? Many thanks, Erin
On-Page Optimization | | HiddenPeak0 -
Date stamp in serp
I have a website with sauna reviews. These are mostly pages that exist for years and regularly change because comments/reviews are added by visitors and/or because I change information on the page. When searching in Google for competitive keywords I noticed that the snippet of my direct competitor included a date stamp in the format (9 hous ago). How can I include a time stamp in the snippet, and more important how can I make sure that the timestamp is very recent. Is it sufficient to add a date on the page every time the page is updated or is ther emore to it?
On-Page Optimization | | oeroek0 -
German SEO
Just a quickie, Does anybody know of any strong German SEO agencies? Many Thanks Sean
On-Page Optimization | | Yozzer0