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.
Fresh page versus old page climbing up the rankings.
-
Hello,
I have noticed that if publishe a webpage that google has never seen it ranks right away and usually in a descend position to start with (not great but descend). Usually top 30 to 50 and then over the months it slowly climbs up the rankings.
However, if my page has been existing for let's say 3 years and I make changes to it, it takes much longer to climb up the rankings
Has someone noticed that too ? and why is that ?
-
"Query deserves freshness!"
Also, changing an entire paragraph content instead of only a few sentences to the current old content on a page can make a lot of difference.
Make sure you keep in mind the keyword to which the page is optimized for and don't go overboard and over-optimize the page. This will affect you really bad in the long run and you'll observe that the ranking goes down.
-
"Query deserves freshness!"
Also, changing an entire paragraph content instead of only a few sentences to the current old content on a page can make a lot of difference.
Make sure you keep in mind the keyword to which the page is optimized for and don't go overboard and over-optimize the page. This will affect you really bad in the long run and you'll observe that the ranking goes down.
-
Ok that is good to know, I will wait and see if this is what happens.
Thank you,
-
I have seen on multiple occasion right after a new page is indexed in Google, immediately skyrockets to the first page ( or close) depending on keyword. Then, a week later, it is ranked in the 40s, and for weeks after that starts the stock market-esq climb. Up, down, up, down, and hopefully towards a positive trend line.
-
Thank you for the information.
-
There could be many reasons for this. It all depends on the changes you are making to the pages!
If you make changes that improve the pages content there would be no real reason for you to drop.
If you had a page ranking for "SEO" and then you changed the content so the keyword "SEO" was no longer included but "website optimisation" was.. are you saying it would take longer for you to rank for "website optimisation" then if you just set up a new page? If this is the case, then it makes sense! If the keywords you want to be found for change, I would create a new page and if you are worried about duplicate content - then 301 the old page to the new one.
However, if you still want to be found for "SEO" and you are simply making changes to the content, as long as you add good informative content that still includes your keyword you shouldn't see any major drop.
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
-
Do 403 Forbidden errors from website pages hurt rankings?
Hi All, I noticed that our website has lot of 403 errors across different pages using the tool http://www.deadlinkchecker.com/. Do these errors hurt website rankings? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Substantial difference between Number of Indexed Pages and Sitemap Pages
Hey there, I am doing a website audit at the moment. I've notices substantial differences in the number of pages indexed (search console), the number of pages in the sitemap and the number I am getting when I crawl the page with screamingfrog (see below). Would those discrepancies concern you? The website and its rankings seems fine otherwise. Total indexed: 2,360 (Search Consule)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Online-Marketing-Guy
About 2,920 results (Google search "site:example.com")
Sitemap: 1,229 URLs
Screemingfrog Spider: 1,352 URLs Cheers,
Jochen0 -
Location Pages On Website vs Landing pages
We have been having a terrible time in the local search results for 20 + locations. I have Places set up and all, but we decided to create location pages on our sites for each location - brief description and content optimized for our main service. The path would be something like .com/location/example. One option that has came up in question is to create landing pages / "mini websites" that would probably be location-example.url.com. I believe that the latter option, mini sites for each location, would be a bad idea as those kinds of tactics were once spammy in the past. What are are your thoughts and and resources so I can convince my team on the best practice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KJ-Rodgers0 -
Google indexing only 1 page out of 2 similar pages made for different cities
We have created two category pages, in which we are showing products which could be delivered in separate cities. Both pages are related to cake delivery in that city. But out of these two category pages only 1 got indexed in google and other has not. Its been around 1 month but still only Bangalore category page got indexed. We have submitted sitemap and google is not giving any crawl error. We have also submitted for indexing from "Fetch as google" option in webmasters. www.winni.in/c/4/cakes (Indexed - Bangalore page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_blr_cakes.xml) 2. http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 (Not indexed - Hyderabad page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_hyd_cakes.xml) I tried searching for "hyderabad site:www.winni.in" in google but there also http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 this link is not coming, instead of this only www.winni.in/c/4/cakes is coming. Can anyone please let me know what could be the possible issue with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abhihan0 -
Page Rank Worse After Optimization
For a long time, we had terrible on page SEO. No keyword targeting, no meta titles or descriptions. Just a brief 2-4 sentence product description and shipping information. Strangely, we weren't ranking too bad. For one product, we were ranking on page 1 of Google for a certain keyword. My goal to reach the top of page 1 would be easy (or so I thought). I have now optimized this page to rank better for the same keyword. I have a 276 word description with detailed specifications and shipping information. I have a strong title and meta description with keywords and modifers. I have also included a video demonstration, additional photos and an PDF of the owners manual. In my eyes, the page is 100% better than it ever was. In the eyes of MOZ, it's better also. I've got an A with the On-Page Grader. Why is this page now ranking on page 8 of Google? What have I done wrong? What can I do to correct it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dkeipper0 -
Should we 301 redirect old events pages on a website?
We have a client that has an events category section that is filled to the brim with past events webpages. Another issue is that these old events webpages all contain duplicate meta description tags, so we are concerned that Google might be penalizing our client's website for this issue. Our client does not want to create specialized meta description tags for these old events pages. Would it be a good idea to 301 redirect these old events landing pages to the main events category page to pass off link equity & remove the duplicate meta description tag issue? This seems drastic (we even noticed that searchmarketingexpo.com is keeping their old events pages). However it seems like these old events webpages offer little value to our website visitors. Any feedback would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Data highlighter in WMT displays old version of page
I want to mark up a business address for Google Local, so I thought I would use the data highlighter in WMT. However I only just added the address to the the bottom of the home page and when using data highlighter iit is giving me the old version of page to mark up without the address on. Rather frustrating, does any body have any experience on the time frame until Google updates the page in the data highlighter? According to this thread it's not even related to the page re caching: Data Highlighter: Start link is pulling an old version of page
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Milian0 -
NOINDEX listing pages: Page 2, Page 3... etc?
Would it be beneficial to NOINDEX category listing pages except for the first page. For example on this site: http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/101/fsx-missions/ Has lots of pages such as Page 2, Page 3, Page 4... etc: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aflyawaysimulation.com+fsx+missions Would there be any SEO benefit of NOINDEX on these pages? Of course, FOLLOW is default, so links would still be followed and juice applied. Your thoughts and suggestions are much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640