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How to update website's content?

Once you have created content for websites or blog should you go back from time to time to refresh or update that info?

  • Or should you just create a new piece with the updated info?

  • Answer:

    I don't think there's a definitive answer here, but I will tell you that Darren Rowse (aka ProBlogger - http://www.problogger.net/) has always recommended going back and editing old blog posts. His reasoning (based on my memory) is that re-writing old content improves the quality of your blog, helps you link to newer articles that are relevant, and can often help stimulate ideas for new posts. From an SEO perspective, editing old content is probably better than creating a new post that is merely a re-write of the old one...but I don't know that the difference is huge. There's also the fact that, all things being equal, new blog posts tend to rank higher than old ones (Google likes to emphasize "freshness" in blog results), so it might make sense to go with a new post.

Jason Lancaster at Quora Visit the source

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To add to 's answer, you can get the best of both worlds. It's definitely worth continuing to hone and refine your greatest hits. Freshness might matter more to the Google bots, but quality is the factor that makes it likelier for humans to share and bookmark you, and to vote you up on Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit etc. That kind of organic traffic is worth its weight in gold. Meanwhile, have there been any new developments since you wrote the original post? Any substantially new angles that you've thought of? Write a new post that references and links back to the old one. Go back to the old one and link to the new one. Not only does this help with SEO, it also benefits your human readers, who might benefit from the progression in your thinking over time.

Ethan Hein

I believe its good strategy to update the old blog posts as we can't write every time the new content. But you need to do some considerations before updating the old blog posts. Go to Google Analytic and check the traffic stats of the posts. Posts those are already performing well, there is no need to do any changes in them. There would be some posts on which you put lots of efforts and they are not getting much traffic, for such posts you definitely need to spend some time to update them with new information. Checkout this post at FATbit blog to know in details: http://www.fatbit.com/fab/improve-traffic-business-blog-without-writing-another-blog-post/

Ankush Mahajan

What I like to do (not as often as I should) is what Ethan suggests. I might write a new post to follow-up on the old with more current information, but then add a link to the old one to let people know that there is another post that continues the story. Also when editing old posts I try to make it clear that I'm making an addition or change, so that I'm really revising history. Jason brings up a good question about SEO. I have some older articles that are evergreen (not likely to go out-of-date) that continue to bring in traffic, yet new posts inspire people to come back. So both are viable. Perhaps we fall back on the position that the more pages you  have the better for SEO, so just keep writing.

Heidi Cool

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