How does Google treat significant content changes to web pages and how should I flag them as such?
-
I have several pages (~30) that I have plans to overhaul. The URLs will be identical and the theme of the content will be the same (still talking about the same widgets, using the same language) but I will be adding a lot more useful information for users, specifically including things that I think will help with my fairly high bounce rate on these pages.
I believe the changes will be significant enough for Google to notice, I was wondering if it goes "this is basically a new page now, I will treat it as such and rank accordingly" or does it go "well this content was rubbish last time I checked so it is probably still not great".
My second question is, is there a way I can get Google to specifically crawl a page it already knows about with fresh eyes? I know in the Search Console I can ask Google to index new pages, and I've experimented with if I can ask it to crawl a page I know Google knows (it allows me to) but I couldn't see any evidence of it doing anything with that index.
Some background
The reason I'm doing this is because I noticed when these pages first ranked, they did very well (almost all first / second page for the terms I wanted). After about two weeks I've noticed them sliding down.
It doesn't look like the competition is getting any better so my running theory is they ranked well to begin with because they are well linked internally and the content is good/relevant and one of the main things negatively impacting me (that google couldn't know at the time) is bounce rate.
-
Thanks Matt,
I do have Search Console, sorry for not making that more clear in my question.
I've experimented with if I can ask it to crawl a page I know Google knows (it allows me to) but I couldn't see any evidence of it doing anything with that index.
Are you suggesting then that asking it to crawl a page already in its index does have an effect? If that is the case or if that is all I can do then perfect
-
Toby,
Do you have Google Search Console set up?
If so, you can easily request reindexing under the Crawl menu using the "Fetch as Google" function.
If you don't have search console, you can find it here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en
And here are directions from Google on how to set it up. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6001104?hl=en
Good luck,
Matt
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 web master tool - stats
Hello everyone! I have 2 questions : 1. does anyone come across this behavior ? (image 1). In the last week Page crawled per day behavior was quite wild and it wasn't affect directly on Time spent downloading a page. 2. I'm getting site map warning for high response time (image 2) i have 29M pages so I aware that 4 warning for 4 pages is almost negligible but still ? Thanks to all helpers 8OkgXp7 q3txRAb q3txRAb
Search Behavior | | Roi_Bar1 -
Google PageRank and google keyword ranks
Hi, I manage around 13 Clients for SEO and this last two weeks i have been having problems with google keyword ranking some of my clients went down almost 40 positions for some keywords other 15 other stayed the same and some just went down 1 or 5 positions. Somebody know what is happening with google? is it shuffling around positions of people? Any advice or how you do your SEO I'm willing to work together and share experiences and tactics on SEO to people that also share with me in order to build more strategies on this amazing market. Thanks.
Search Behavior | | computernc0 -
Real-time monitoring of web traffic
I used Woopra for the past year to monitor real time traffic to my websites but they recently dropped support for the desktop app and replaced it with a web app. As best I can tell the web app does not have the real-time alerts and other features that made the desktop app very compelling for me. Perhaps I don't fully understand how to use the new web app, but I don't find it particularly useful. Are there any other tools that provide good real-time monitoring of websites. Best,
Search Behavior | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0 -
Does Google recognise locality
We have been undertaking some website work recently and have identified that within our own geographical location of Hull, the www.styletech.co.uk website is first on page one. However, when moving approximately 30 miles away we are on Googles fourth page. We are in an independent network area e.g. Kingston Communications rather than BT, would this have an impact on how Google responds?
Search Behavior | | StyleTech0 -
Google Local
I am new to Google Local and just bagged a project. Can somebody guide me how to go about it. Is Google Local all about listing the business in Directory and Classified sites with complete address and profile? Any help will be highly appreciated.
Search Behavior | | KS__0 -
SERPs changing on an hourly basis
Hi Mozzers, Can anyone help me please. I have a client that is ranking in position 2 for his major keyword in G.co.uk. He's been moving up but over the last 7 - 10 days he's moved down, then back up and around and around the front page which we all know can happen. The thing is - this is changing through the day 4 or 5 times in some cases. I've checked when the first page of the SERPs have been indexed via the cached button and normally Google hasn't crawled the competition or my guys site on the given day the changes happen, yet he's been 2, 5 and 7 and back to 2 in about 3 hours. Are these social signals do you think? whats going on - any ideas? Cheers Bush
Search Behavior | | Bush_JSM0 -
Google Is Displaying An Alt image tag as my homepage's page title
Google is randomly displaying the alt image tag as the page title for my homepage. It happens when you search for the brand name, but the page title appears as "BrandName Logo" (obviously not "BrandName"). Has anybody seen this happen before?
Search Behavior | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
How to get more page impressions?
I'm wondering about one of our web-projects. There's a lot of good interesting content but the statistics of page impressions don't make me very happy. Each user is visiting just 1,5 sites per visit. That's really not much. We have other (similar) projects where this problem does not exist, where user are visiting a lot more sites per visit. I have no idea what could be the reason for it. Do you know / use some tricks to get more page impressions? Thank you, Sally
Search Behavior | | SallyO0