Internet Marketing Coach
How Often Should I Update my Web Pages?
February 5th, 2008 | 21 comments
Just about any SEO will tell you frequently updated content is very important in the on-page optimization of any Web Page. But, for the past few years I’ve seen results that say otherwise.
I never put much thought into it until Jonathan mentioned it in his “Search Engine Myths Exposed” report. After being reminded of it, I started thinking about some of my own sites that have been around for several years and continue to rank well in the SE’s.
Like I’ve said in the past, I don’t claim to be any sort of SEO expert. However, I know what has worked for me and what hasn’t.
With that in mind, lets take a look at a few examples:
Two of the first Web Sites I ever created (late 2005 - early 2006) were thegermantruth.com and everythingaboutgermany.com Both are ugly sites that need an incredible amount of improvement SEO-wise, information-wise and visually. However, except for a few minor, unimportant updates from time to time (grammar etc.) neither site has had any content updates for almost 2 YEARS!
How well do they rank?
They both rank on the front page of Google for - Germany Tourism
They both rank on the front page of Google for - Germany Travel and Tourism
EverythingAboutGermany.com ranks on Page 2 for - Germany Travel
Many of their internal pages rank on page 1 and 2 for their respective keywords.
What’s More?
TheGermanTruth.com was created first. Only a few months later I created EverythingAboutGermany. Many of the pages contain the EXACT same content! That’s right, probably a quarter of the content is mirrored from one site to the other and they BOTH continue to rank well. A couple months ago I did redirect some of the duplicate pages thinking that Google may figure it out and de-index one or both sites, but both versions were still ranking well with no penalties.
On top of that, a few of the pages were taken from Wikipedia and they rank well too! I’ll go into further detail on duplicate content in the coming days.
What I believe the Truth to be
Obviously it’s always good to update your content as frequently as possible. You want it to be accurate and the more pages you have, the more traffic you’ll receive. However, the ranking of any given Web Page is determined mostly by the quality and quantity of incoming links!
In Google’s Webmaster Central they reply to the question “How can I improve my site’s ranking?” and it seems clear to me:
In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.
But they also say:
Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.
The last quote accounts for about 2% of trivial factors that may or may not increase your rankings. These are all the little things “SEO’s” preach about, but when it comes down to it, it’s about links!
…I’ve yet to see or hear any Google rep say that a page needs to be frequently updated, or updated at all to rank well. And even if someone can dig something up, until I see visual proof I won’t believe it for a second.
Conclusion
Some pages need to be updated to maintain accuracy. However, some pages could stay static for eternity without updates and continue to provide value. Look at Google itself. It’s a big white page with a couple internal links and a search box. Does it need to be updated? No!
The Google Bot is smart, but it’s not that smart. Only a human can determine whether or not a page needs to be updated in order to maintain quality. For that reason and that reason alone a page will not rise or fall in the SERPS due to content update or the lack there of.
However, an update CAN cause a page to rise or fall in the SERPS. Not because it was updated, but because other factors such as a change in the anchor text of links, new keywords etc.
For the past 3 years I’ve been promoting Websites and although I’ve heard it said a million times, I’ve yet to see proof that pages need to be updated in order to maintain SERP rankings or rise in ranking. Frequent content means more pages that can be found. It’s good to build quality content as often as possible, but if you don’t, it will not effect your SE position. SEO is all about the links folks!
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5th February, 2008 at 10:09 pm
I seem to remember reading that Google still considers a site to be relevant if people keep linking to it. I mean, it’s like an old black and white movie. People still watch them on TV and buy the DVDs which means they are just as relevant as any movie released this year.
Just because something is old doesn’t mean it’s worthless.
5th February, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Josh:
Wow. That was an interesting post….the dupe content issue is intriguing. Does it adversely affect sites or not?? I think it does but compared to external links, its negligible. I think frequent updating helps you grab more long tail serp placement but doesn’t really effect current placement as you said. Awaiting future posts.
6th February, 2008 at 12:00 am
@ April - Exactly, for some reason people still preach on how important it is to update.
@ Daniel - There is alot to say about dupe content, so I don’t want to give you a generic comment here and leave things out. I’ll explain what I’ve found to be true about duplicate content along with some examples within the next week though. However, I will say that just about any page on the net will rank well if it has enough quality links pointing to it, whether it’s a dupe or not.
6th February, 2008 at 12:10 am
Josh:
A question I’ve been wondering about is: Will using your blog posts verbatim for article marketing ultimately help or hurt your SERP placement?
6th February, 2008 at 12:51 am
Hey Daniel,
I don’t believe it will “hurt” you, but you’re just competing against yourself. I like to keep my own content unique and use additional articles for the article directories.
6th February, 2008 at 3:03 am
Hey Josh:
Interesting article, but here’s another thought. While it seems true a static page will not necessarily benefit from an update, unless as you say the anchor text changes, I have to disagree with you when it comes to your point and a blog.
When you add a new post to your blog you are also adding new internal links, and thereby increasing the perceived relevance of your older pages (that is as long as your keywords are related). This would apply to a static site too, if you have an internal link structure.
It doesn’t seem a page will fall down the SERPs if it isn’t updated, but it isn’t likely to rise either if it doesn’t get more links, either internal or external.
Another factor to consider is competitive pages which are developed later and which bump your site off the top if they appear more relevant. While it might be possible to maintain your spot in “Germany Tourism” without adding new content, just how likely is such a feat within a more saturated niche?
New content not only can increase your internal links, but creates new opportunities for incoming links from other sites. Ultimately, each page is ranked on its own merit, of course, so changing a few words isn’t necessarily going to change its placement. But adding new pages to your site adds links and the opportunity for links.
Here’s something interesting to work into the duplicate content issue. I’ve parked brand new domains on top of other sites as a way of redirecting traffic when I’ve made changes (yeah, I know). But what I accidentally found out was that when I’ve moved these domains to a site of their own is they had the same PR as the domain where they had been parked! I’m talking about domains with NO unique content and not even their own graphics or layout.
Anyway, I’ll shut up now.
6th February, 2008 at 3:42 am
Pages seem to keep their page rank traffic coming from search engines as long as the content on the page is deemed to be the most relevant by the rest of the web. How many people link to the page, and also people specifically searching for terms or phrases that are only found on the static page will give it relevance in the eyes of the googleplex and keep it high on the search page.
6th February, 2008 at 3:49 am
@ Terry - Good point and very true. Internal links can and will increase the rankings of other pages it links to. However, my main point is that the content updates themselves will not effect the rankings of any given page, like so many say.
@ Steve - Yep, but the main thing is links
6th February, 2008 at 5:38 am
@ Terry - Sorry, forgot to comment on the last part of your comment
How about “Make Money Online” (without quotes) - I’ve been on page 1 on Google for that “competitive” phrase for several months now. Although I have updated it recently, it first hit page 1 when the content hadn’t been updated for almost a year. It’s all about the links man. I continued to build links, so it continued to rise in the serps.
Your point on internal links is valid, but there are several factors to consider. How much juice are you giving that page and how much juice is that page giving? A new page won’t create any new “juice” until you get links pointing to it. The other internal pages that you point to it will have the juice that has already been established, but that’s a given. Once again, it’s all about the links.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t be updating content, I’m just saying pages don’t need to be updated to rise in the SE’s.
—edit— The ol redirect to get a nice PR has been around for years. Google claims to have taken care of it, but it still works. A few guys did it with Google and had pages sitting at PR10. The last page I saw gained PR, but the redirect didn’t pass nearly as much as it would have in the past.
6th February, 2008 at 2:37 pm
The lesson to be learned about the redirect is that duplicate content doesn’t matter much.
6th February, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Yeah I’ve changed my thoughts on duplicate content quite a bit lately. I’ve come to realize, once again, it’s all about the links. That’s why sites like EzineArticles rule the SERPS with content that is duplicated all over the place. They have loads of links coming in. They have a good internal linking structure, which distributes that juice to all the new pages.
6th February, 2008 at 4:22 pm
It’s nice to hear someone say this out loud. I’ve often wondered if it was the case, as I’ve had sites that I haven’t updated for a year or more out of sheer laziness that continued to rise in the listings. In fact, as soon as I made a change, the SERPs positioning changed and then settled back again. I’m itching to hear what you’ve got to say on duplicate content!
7th February, 2008 at 1:49 am
I would agree with the idea that updates can help but it is only one of many factors. For very competitive terms practically everything needs to be in your favor to show up well (so new content and lots of other stuff too). Also Google states they provide extra timeliness boosts to search terms that seem to be about recent news (so if there is all sorts of news about the Super Bowl they will provide a positive bias for recently news…). Tons of stuff that hasn’t been updated in a decade ranks well (new incoming links probably helps a good deal - plus tons of existing links…).
7th February, 2008 at 6:15 pm
@ Allen - I’m not afraid to go against the grain if I see something contrary to popular belief. I may be wrong, but so far I don’t believe I am. Thanks for the comment.
@ John - I think the belief that you have to worry about “everything” in order to rank well for competitive terms is hugely over-exaggerated! I haven’t done any testing on recent news, so I take people’s word for it there; it makes sense. For the most part, like I’ve said a million times, it’s all about the links, not updated content or anything else. There are loads of other factors integrated into their algorithm, but the # and quality of links proves to be the #1 factor. In other words, we don’t need to be SEO experts to rank well. I’m no expert and I rank well for many competitive terms and phrases.
7th February, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Don’t forget also that domain age has quite a heavy weighting in the serps so those sites that haven’t been updated in 2 years are seen by Google as mature domains so that may help their rankings.
7th February, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Hey Caroline, nice to see you stopped by.
I don’t know for sure, but I’d imagine the age would be determined by either the registration date or the first indexing of any given page, so updates wouldn’t affect the weight given for aging. I may be wrong through.
8th February, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Hi Josh - that’s interesting. So they’re both ranking well despite having duplicate content and not being updated? I sometimes wonder how great Google search really is.
11th February, 2008 at 12:03 am
[...] How Often Should I Update my Web Pages? [...]
11th February, 2008 at 9:07 am
Hey Josh, I’m quite sure links are definitely critical. I don’t believe that constant quality content is as important anymore after seeing a blog of mine continue to outrank other (top & better) blogs for a term that they keep writing about due to everyday news but I stopped a long time back.
in fact, if I wanted to, I’d just stick a few more of the long tail keywords that show up in my logs into the existing content and they’ll continue to leave the other sites behind. It’s much easier than writing whole new content. Of course, I’m no expert either, I just keep doing what works for me, and try what guys like you recommend.
24th February, 2008 at 4:27 am
Josh,
Great post, and the one on myths you mention from Jon is a good one also. I enjoyed both. On one of the above post you mention about leaving the site for a year without updating and it attained page one status for “make money online” I think you said. Question, you then say that you just worked on the links. Did you mainly do this through your articles or other means? How did you continue to build those links?
Thanks and I enjoy your work,
Steve
24th February, 2008 at 5:53 pm
@ Catherine - Yep, and that’s only one example.
@ YC - Great to see you stop by. I haven’t seen you around for a while
That’s right, testing is what it’s all about. Things change regularly. However, the most important things rarely change ie. quality incoming links.
@ Steve - Thanks for the compliment! I build those links through several means ie. article marketing, select link exchanges etc.