Wordpress Old Articles date - Update or Not
-
Hey there!
Been reading around and I believe that there isn't a perfect answer to this question, but I surely want to know your opinion.
It's a fact that google likes new content but also updated content, so whats your position concerning the wordpress articles. Meaning, when I decide to update articles from 2011 on its content, should I also update the date?
If I make a search and an article from 2011 will be shown, its unlikely that I will click on it...
So that you can understand my point.
-
Maybe I will leave the date as it was then...
Based on minimal changes, I would do this. A minimal update doesn't need to sit in the background though. Remember to get busy and let everyone know when you update something
-Andy
-
Yes, my only point is to tell user that it was updated and not being penalized by google.
Sometimes the changes are minimal, like in 2011 we recommended X and Y products and now we recommend the Z product because X and Y were discontinued.
Maybe I will leave the date as it was then...
-
I would be tempted to add an 'updated' date and leave the original posted date in place. This way you satisfy both readers and Google.
The only time I would update the actual posted date, is if the article was very significantly different - to the point it wasn't that recognisable as what it used to be.
Get busy sharing the post socially again and make sure you advise people that it has been updated to reflect new data.
-Andy
-
If you do this - do it for the reader, not Google.
If the article has been refreshed with some great value and you think your audience would benefit from seeing it again, then I would update the date. However, if you're trying to game Google by making out that the content/URL is new and fresh (by trying to take advantage of its freshness algorithm), not only would that be frowned upon, but I think I'm right in saying Google has clamped down on that effectiveness quite a lot since 2013.
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
-
Best Wordpress theme for blogging
Hi all, What is the best Wordpress theme for a professional DM blog? I am looking for something minimalistic where I can add my personal profile and have articles nicely listed, potentially grouped within categories. Any ideas? Thanks. Katarina
Content Development | | Katarina-Borovska3 -
Be brutily honest - What do you think of this old content?
My website reports on news relating to certain web hosting providers, and being hit by the latest phantom update a little I am looking back a little more harshly on some of my content with especially the older articles needing alot of work (I know some areas on the site need work), and there are some articles I am just not sure about. I have listed a few OLD articles below https://www.besthostnews.com/the-power-of-shared-web-hosting-by-bluehost/ https://www.besthostnews.com/siteground-sponsors-wordcamp-london/ https://www.besthostnews.com/free-ebook-guide-to-starting-a-website-on-a-budget-a-small-orange/ These are 3 old articles that I have previously updated several months ago, but are they good enough. Due to the nature of the site sometimes I will report on certain news \ features that a web host releases, and sometimes there is very little to write about. These are probably a good example where I feel there is a struggle to write enough or the quality is perhaps lower than something that has more information to report on. I would appreciate some harsh critical view points \ and perhaps suggestions on how to improve my writing style for these kind of generic style posts.
Content Development | | TheWebMastercom0 -
Images in articles - copying the authority in my industry
Hello, For my site, BobWeikel.com, I have an article about the type of coaching I do. It's called "What is NLP?" Here's the link. The two authorities in my industry which I respect the most have no (or sometimes one) images or anything in their best articles - it's all just text. Some examples of these authoritative articles are here and here. Note the second article has one image in it. That's common for that author, and he's the top person in the field. Note that that first link has no images at all. I'd like to refine my article until I can compete. Should I leave out all images since that's what the big guys are doing? Thanks!
Content Development | | BobGW0 -
Is Wordpress good for SEO
Is Wordpress good for SEO? If so, any tips? Do I need to set up as a subdomain so www.blog.mysite.com? Thanks
Content Development | | Studio330 -
Is modifying already published articles a problem?
Is there any problem updating the date and text of a news article if the URL remains the same? For example, if we published a minor sports story on Monday and on Wednesday there was a small update to the story I would like to take my original article and change the date + first paragraph of the text to make it still relevant for my users to read without having to write an entirely new article since this is not a major story and there is not much new content to add. Any SEO issues with take the original article and changing the first paragraph + title?
Content Development | | theLotter0 -
Duplicate Page Content WordPress blog with categories?
Just got a crawl report back from SEOmoz and it gives me lots of errors for "duplicate page content". Upon investigating, I notice this is because my WP blog is setup into categories so the home page is almost identical to one of the category pages. None of my actually posts are the same but the category pages have some overlap since the same post could show up in two or more categories. Is this a problem or can I just ignore this error? Any thing I should be doing differently? Thanks!
Content Development | | frankthetank20 -
Displaying archive content articles in a writers bio page
My site has writers, and each has their own profile page (accessible when you click their name inside an article). We set up the code in a way that the bios, in addition to the actual writer photo/bio, would dynamically generate links to each article he/she produces. Figured that someone reading something by Bob Smith, might want to read other stuff by him. Which was fine, initially. Fast forward, and some of these writers have 3,4, even 15 pages of archives, as the archive system paginates every 10 articles (so www.example.com/bob-smith/archive-page3, etc) My thinking is that this is a bad thing. The articles are likely already found elsewhere in the site (under the content landing page it was written for, for example) and I visualize spiders getting sucked into these archive black holes, never to return. I also assume that it is just more internal mass linking (yech) and probably doesnt help the overall TOS/bounce/exit, etc. Thoughts?
Content Development | | EricPacifico0 -
Fixing Wordpress URLs
I just redid our blog and I am using permalinks. I have the custom structure set to /%year%/%postname%/ and catagory - blank. When I run the XENU Link Slueth, it shows all my blog urls as broken, but the links work fine. However the url structure is www.example.com/2010/10/20/ and so on. I am worried about duplicate content too. Do you know how I can fix the url structure so only 1 or 2 urls are used?
Content Development | | hfranz0