How important is fresh content?
-
Lets say the website you are working on has covered most of the important topics on your subject. How important is it that you continue to add content to it when there really may not be much that is so relevant to your users anymore? Can a site continue to rank well if nothing new is added to the site for year but continues to get good quality links?
-
Hi Demi
Is the blog on a sub-domain of the main site or a separate domain.
If it is on a sub domain, then this counts as fresh content. if it is not you might want to think about moving the Blog to a sub domain.
Can you let us know
Bruce.
-
Content for the page is really where we are having a problem because we really do have most relevant topics covered. As far as blogging, that's not a problem we can always find new "news" to write about in the industry.
So I guess I am talking more about the content, and not blogs. If we aren't adding new content on a typical page, is that ok?
-
I also agree with Ray-pp & BruceA.
You CAN continue to rank well. However, I wouldn't suggest that you abandon blogging about trending topics within said websites industry. There is ALWAYS something that can be explained better/improved upon or something fresh and new to talk about with our audience.
Question: When you are asking about adding content, are you referring to your typical page content or are you referring to blogging?
-
Agreed.
Find new unique angles to keep the site content unique and fresh, For most business's seasons, annual or quarterly events either in the business or outside can provide insites and a great reason to add more current content to the existing content already provided.
If you are a bit stuck, let us a bit more about the industry so we can perhaps give a few more angles to help give you some ideas.
Bruce
-
Hi DemiGR,
Yes, your site can continue to rank well. If the topics genuinely do not warrant updated content, then link building will most likely keep you at the top of the SERPs. However, you're inviting the competition to come in and outrank you somewhat easily.
When you're not producing fresh content, competitors can easily rank by creating authority pages and then adding layers of fresh, related content. I suggest finding relevant topics to write about and point back to yoru authority pages (the topics that don't change much).
For example, is there a recent new article related to your website content? Speak on that topic and link back to the authority page that explains the topic in depth. Using current events is an easy way to add new content to your site and keep things relevant.
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
-
Google's Importance on usability issues in sub directories or sub domains?
Hi Moz community, As the different usability issues like pagespeed or mobile responsiveness are playing a key role in website rankings; I wonder how much the same factors are important for sub directories or sub domain pages? Do each and every page of sub directory or sub domain must be optimised like website pages? Does Google gives same importance? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
I'm Pulling Hairs! - Duplicate Content Issue on 3 Sites
Hi, I'm an SEO intern trying to solve a duplicate content issue on three wine retailer sites. I have read up on the Moz Blog Posts and other helpful articles that were flooded with information on how to fix duplicate content. However, I have tried using canonical tags for duplicates and redirects for expiring pages on these sites and it hasn't fixed the duplicate content problem. My Moz report indicated that we have 1000s of duplicates content pages. I understand that it's a common problem among other e-commerce sites and the way we create landing pages and apply dynamic search results pages kind of conflicts with our SEO progress. Sometimes we'll create landing pages with the same URLs as an older landing page that expired. Unfortunately, I can't go around this problem since this is how customer marketing and recruitment manage their offers and landing pages. Would it be best to nofollow these expired pages or redirect them? Also I tried to use self-referencing canonical tags and canonical tags that point to the higher authority on search results pages and even though it worked for some pages on the site, it didn't work for a lot of the other search result pages. Is there something that we can do to these search result pages that will let google understand that these search results pages on our site are original pages? There are a lot of factors that I can't change and I'm kind of concerned that the three sites won't rank as well and also drive traffic that won't convert on the site. I understand that Google won't penalize your sites with duplicate content unless it's spammy. So If I can't fix these errors -- since the company I work conducts business where we won't ever run out of duplicate content -- Is it worth going on to other priorities in SEO like Keyword research, On/Off page optimization? Or should we really concentrate on fixing these technical issues before doing anything else? I'm curious to know what you think. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | drewstorys0 -
Google creating it own content
I am based in Australia but a US founded search on 'sciatica' shows an awesome answer on the RHS of the SERP https://www.google.com/search?q=sciatica&oq=sciatica&aqs=chrome.0.69i59.3631j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 The download on sciatica is a pdf created by google. Firstly is this common in the US? secondly any inputs on where this is heading for rollout would be appreciated. Is google now creating its own content to publish?
Algorithm Updates | | ClaytonJ0 -
Duplicate Content
I was just using a program (copyscpape) to see if the content on a clients website has been copied. I was surprised that the content on the site was displaying 70% duplicated and it's showing the same content on a few sites with different % duplicated (ranging from 35%-80%) I have been informed that the content on the clients site is original and was written by the client. My question is, does Google know or understand that the clients website's content was created as original and that the other sites have copied it word-for-word and placed it on their site? Does he need to re-write the content to make it original? I just want to make sure before I told him to re-write all the content on the site? I'm well aware that duplicate content is bad, but i'm just curious if it's hurting the clients site because they originally created the content. Thanks for your input.
Algorithm Updates | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
Duplicate Content?
My client is a manufacturers representative for highly technical controls. The manufacturers do not sell their products directly, relying on manufacturers reps to sell and service them. Most but not all of them publish their specs on their sites, usually in PDF only. As a service to our customers and with permission of the manufacturers we publish the manufacturers specs on our site for our customers in HTML with images and downloadable PDF's — this constitutes our catalogue. The pages are lengthy and technical, and are pretty much the opposite of thin content. The URLS for these (technical) queries rank well, so Google doesn't seem to mind. Does this constitute duplicate content and can we be penalized for it?
Algorithm Updates | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Ecommerce: How does having fresh content affect rankings
Hello, For an Ecommerce site, how does fresh content affect rankings? Meaning, fresh vs old content on the home page, category pages, product pages, articles. Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | BobGW0 -
Shouldn’t Google always rank a website for its own unique, exact +10 word content such as a whole sentence?
Hello fellow SEO's, I'm working with a new client who owns a property related website in the UK.
Algorithm Updates | | Qasim_IMG
Recently (May onwards) they have experienced significant drops in nearly all non domain/brand related rankings. From page 1 to +5 or worse. Please see the attached webmaster tools traffic graph.
The 13th of June seemed to have the biggest drop (UK Panda update???) When we copy and paste individual +20 word sentences from within top level content Google does bring up exact results, the content is indexed but the clients site nearly always appears at the bottom of SERP's. Even very new or small, 3-4 page domains that have clearly all copied all of their content are out ranking the original content on the clients site. As I'm sure know, this is very annoying for the client! And this even happens when Google’s cache date (that appears next to the results) for the clients content is clearly older then the other results! The only major activity was the client utilising Google optimiser which redirects traffic to various test pages. These tests finished in June. Details about the clients website: Domain has been around for 4+ years The website doesn't have a huge amount of content, around 40 pages. I would consider 50% original, 20% thin and 30% duplicate (working on fixing this) There haven’t been any signicant sitewide or page changes. Webmaster tools show nothing abnormal or any errors messages (some duplicate meta/title tags that are being fixed) All the pages of the site are indexed by Google Domain/page authority is above average for the niche (around 45 in for the domain in OSE) There are no ads of any kind on the site There are no special scripts or anything fancy that could cause problems I can't seem to figure it out, I know the site can be improved but such a severe drop where even very weak domains are out ranking suggests a penalty of some sort? Can anyone help me out here? hxuSn.jpg0 -
Update content
y'all, what is the recommended amount of time in which content on a website should be refreshed? TY
Algorithm Updates | | imageworks-2612900