Dealing with updating blog posts
-
I run a travel and culture blog which means that I write about a lot of upcoming events which recur each year. Usually I title (and slug) the page with the event name and date.
When it comes to update the article the next year, sometimes it's as little as changing the date, other times more has changed and it needs to be substantially re-written.
Until now, what I've done is update the title, content, and then re-posted (sometimes altering the slug where it's needed to be done). Sometimes it works fine and Google keeps me ranking well, but other times the changes dont get such a great response.
I have these options (as far as I can see). Which do you think is best?
1. To create a new article each year and put a message at the start of the previous one to say, click here to read about the 2012 event
2. To continue what I'm doing updating, changing the slug, and re-posting (ie changing the date).
3. To write a new article and insert a 301 redirect.
I need to make sure the article appears as a new article in my RSS feed and also on the homepage.
Look forward to your ideas!
Thanks
-
Wow - now I feel like my idea has been blessed by a god (Lead SEO at SEOMoz).....feeling quite chuffed actually!
-
That sounds like a great idea. I'll try it. I have a fair number of readers coming through the RSS feed so don't really want to lose that.
I'll try it and let you guys know!
-
I like Gary's suggestion - having one page for the event over multiple years means that you're not creating a new page every time, so the page can continue to benefit from the links it accrues year over year (changing the slug means the post loses its link equity every time).
I can't find any statement from Google saying that changing the publish date of a piece of content isn't allowed when the content is updated. I think in this case it should be fine since your intent isn't to manipulate - it's an update page and a new post.
The other solutions would be to redirect all of your past event pages to the new one every time you make a new one - this would preserve a portion of your link equity - or not to update the publish date (I don't know how much traffic you get from RSS readers so that would be your call).
-
Ok. Thanks anyway!
Anyone?
-
I wasn't aware the Google didn't like a modified "published date" perhaps someone with more knowledge on that than me can help? Sorry, I believe in "knowing your limits" and I have no personal experience with that being a problem (I am not saying it is not, just that I don't know!).
-
Thanks for the reply
I dont necessarily need to keep previous years content - the issue with that way is that to get the updated post to go into the RSS I'd need to play with the publish date and that isn't something Google likes, right?
Thanks
-
How about you maintain a single "page", i.e. a consistent URL for the "current year", so a slug of something like
-my-event-event-name (no dates or anything like that in the slug) then each year
1.) Put the new/revised content on that URL. Include the year in title, content, description etc.
2.) Create a new post and copy the last year's content to that one including the historic date and link to it (if you want) so a URL a bit like -my-event-event-name-2011
That way, you always have the latest content on a consistent URL. You can then maintain all the links you accrue over time to a single URL, just update content each year and store all of the past posts on "newly created" URLS each year. No matter whether they rank or not, presumably....
Gary
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
-
Is this blog running on the Genesis Framework?
Hi all, WordPress isn't my area of specialty in terms of themes and identifying what a blog might currently be using. Here's the link: http://www.pens.com/blog I've had one developer tell me this blog is on the Genesis framework and another one told me it is not. Can someone weigh in here and also give me some tips on how to know one way or the other? If it is not on the Genesis Framework, can you provide any helpful links/tutorials on how to get this blog onto the Genesis Framework? We want to be able to use Yoast SEO and apparently our current theme will not allow us to do so. Thanks in advance! Dana
On-Page Optimization | | danatanseo0 -
Update old article or publish new content and redirect old post?
Hi all, I'm targetting a keyword and we used to rank quite good for it. Last couple of months traffic of that keyword (and variations) is going down a bit. I wrote an extensive new post on the same topic, much more in dept and from 600 to 1800 words covering the same topic. Is it better to update the old article and mention that it's updated recently, or publish a new post and redirect the old post to the new post?
On-Page Optimization | | jorisbrabants0 -
How best to deal with internal duplicate content
hi having an issue with a client site and internal duplicate content. The client has a custom cms and when they post new content it can appear, in full, at two different urls on the site. Short of getting the client to move cms, which they won't do, I am trying to find an easy fix that they could do themselves. ideally they would add a canonical on one of the versions but the cms does allow them to view posts in html view, also would be a lot if messing about wth posting the page and then going back to the cms and adding the tag. the cms is unable to auto generate this either. The content editors are copywriters not programmers. Would there be a solution using wmt for this? They have the skill level to be able to add a url in wmt so im thinking that a stop gap solution could be to noindex one of the versions using the option in webmaster tools. Ongoing we will consult developers about modifying the cms but budgets are limited so looking for a cheap and quick solution to help until the new year. anyone know of a way other than wmt to block Google from seeing duplicate content. We can block Google from folders because only a small percentage of the content in the folder would be internally duplicate. would be very grateful for any suggestions anyone could offer. thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | daedriccarl0 -
Wordpress blog duplicate issue
So after looking at the set up of the blog ive found this. http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/ http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/category/news/ http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/category/general/ http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/category/snow/ Content shown on http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/ can also be found on the other 3 urls. The permalink structure is set up as /%category%/%postname%/ which I want to change to just %postname% Obviously i want to make things as seo friendly as possible so any suggestions to do this right without losing any indexed pages etc. I have limited access to make changes to plugins etc aswell as these need to be done through the development company who manage our site. Cheers Robert
On-Page Optimization | | Trespass0 -
Should sub domain blog have www or non www
My main site has htaccess rewrite condition to force www. I just added a blog on sub domain and have it www.blog.domain.com Is this setup correctly or should it be http://blog.domain.com or does it make a difference? A colleague just pointed that out and said it should be non www for blog or any sub domains. Thanks for any clarification.
On-Page Optimization | | anthonytjm0 -
Exponentially Increasing Duplicate Content On Blogs
Most of the clients that I pick up are either new to SEO best practices, or have worked with sketchy SEO providers in the past, who did little more than build spammy links. Most of them have deployed little if any on-site SEO best practices, and early on I spend a lot of time fixing canonical and duplicate content issues alla 301 redirects. Using SEOMOZ, however, I see a lot of duplicate content issues with blogs that live on the sites I work on. With every new blog article we publish, more duplicate content builds up. I feel like duplicate content on blogs grows exponentially, because every time you write a blog article, it exists provisionally on the blog homepage, the article link, a category page, maybe a tag page, and an author page. I have a two-part question: Is duplicate content like this a problem for a blog -- and for the website that the blog lives on? Are search engines able to parse out that this isn't really duplicate content? If it is a problem, how would you go about solving it? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | RCNOnlineMarketing0 -
Should I delete my old blog now that it has been transfered?
I just transfered my free wordpress.com blog to my main business site and I did not know if I should delete my old blog or is it a big issue to have the same content on both sites. I will be adding to my biz site from now on.
On-Page Optimization | | greenjoe0 -
Blog page outranks static page for KW -- why?
Blog page ranks 10 in Google, while the static page is on page 7. What makes it more interesting is that the blog page scores an "F" with the Term Target tool while the static page scores an "A". Static page has more inbound links and a mR/mT of 3.89/ 4.54 vs. 3.71/ 4.14 for the blog page. Any ideas on how to approach this one?
On-Page Optimization | | 540SEO0