How much content is it safe to change?
-
I have read that it is unsafe to change more than 20% of your site’s content in any update.
The rationale is that "Changing too much at once can flag your site within the Google algorithm as having something suspicious going on."
Is this true, has anyone had any direct experiences of this or similar?
-
I would have absolutely no concerns over changing your content, as long as you are confident you are changing it for the better.
-
I definitely don't think there's any truth to your site possibly being penalized merely for changing a certain percentage of the site.
However:
- In general, it's always good to change your site in slow increments wherever possible.
- This allows search engine's to slowly adjust to your changes in url structure, content, or site design. Your site wouldn't be "penalized" for it, but considering search engine's have to recrawl your site and adjust to your changes, making sure you don't shock the system by making too many changes is certainly never a bad idea.
-
Sorry should have been clearer its when the text changes as part of a redesign.
Still its seems odd to me.
-
Haven't heard anything like that before. There are plenty of sites who change more than 20% of a page's content often (news sites, forums, search pages) and aren't penalized.
The only thing you should worry about is if you change more than 20% of the content, Google would recrawl and analyze the text and adjust it's relevance for keyword searches accordingly. So maybe you are getting a lot of traffic from a certain paragraph that you remove when you update the page, your rankings will drop from losing that keyword on the page.
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
-
Does personalization that changes meta data display in SERPs impact SEO?
My company has been rolling out personalization at the page level across our site using behavior paths embedding content from cross pathed pages as well as customer journey mapping. The dynamically generated content doesn’t change the URLs. In the SERPs I’m seeing that our title tags and meta descriptions also seem to be dynamically generated even though we have these elements crafted. The way our elements are crafted: Title tag: descriptive Keyword rich phrase | Brand Meta description: Keyword rich, grammatically correct description tied to title tag and page content for consistency. I search a specific URL: Title tag display: Keyword rich phrase | Brand – Brand Meta description display: Random content pulled from the page I search a phrase that includes Brand + keywords in the URL: Title tag display: Title tag we crafted Meta description display: Meta description we crafted I search a phrase that includes Brand + keywords in the title tag: Title tag display: Title tag we crafted Meta description display: Random content pulled from the page Does Google crawl the page and digest the title tag and meta description we crafted? Or is Google going to ding us for having the brand twice, exceeding the length of the title tag, etc.? I have been searching the interwebs, forums and the cosmos, but the only information I’m finding is related to the fact that URLs are changing and how that would impact SEO. That’s not the case for us. Thoughts on how all this is impacting our SEO efforts?
Algorithm Updates | | NStarJM0 -
Are links from inside duplicate content on a 3rd party site pointing back to you worthwhile.
In our niche there are lots of specialist 'profile / portfolio' sites were we can upload content (usually project case studies. These are often quite big and active networks and can drive decent traffic and provide links from high ranking pages. The issue im a bit stuck on is - because they are profile / portfolio based usually its the same content uploaded to each site. But im beginning to get the feeling that these links from within duplicate content although from high ranking sites are not having an effect. Im about to embark on a campaign to re rewrite each of our portfolio items (each one c. 400 words c. 10 times) for each different site, but before i do i wandered if any one has had any experience / a point of view on with wether Google is not valuing links from within duplicate content (bare in mind these arnt spam sites, and are very reputable, mainly because once you submit the content it gets reviewed prior to going live). And wether a unique rewrite of the content solves this issue.
Algorithm Updates | | Sam-P0 -
Is it Safe to Migrate from All-in-Seo WordPress Plugin to Yoast Plugin ?
I am using All-in SEO plugin from the time we started using blog, can we use the new Yoast plugin, i mean i do not want to lose any data or value to our article. I want to migrate them Will it be safe ! some saying do not go - others says you can ! Please if you ever did or have experience tell me ! My Blog is important for me ! The Yoast plugin gives many features compare to All-in-SEO.
Algorithm Updates | | Esaky0 -
How to content marketing: Should my blog posts link to my sales page?
Hi, I've been doing a weekly blog making sure that each blog post contains my money keywords in the text, sometimes in h2 tags etc. My blog posts never contain any links to my actual sales page. Should I link each blog post to my sale page or is it overdoing it? Will internal linking of all my blog posts to my sales page will improve its page authority or have any SEO benefits? What about using exact match anchor text on these internal links? I couldn't find any resource online about this matter. Thank you for your opinion and help! -Marc
Algorithm Updates | | marcandre0 -
Google webmaster tool content keywords Top URLs
GWT->Optimization->Content Keywords section... If we click on the keyword it will further shows the variants and Top URLs containing those variants. My problem is none of the important pages like product details pages, homepage or category pages are present in that Top URLs list. All the news, guides section url's are listed in the Top URLs section for most important keyword that is also present in my domain name. How to make google realize the important pages for the important keyword?
Algorithm Updates | | BipSum0 -
Google Algorithm change? - Brand name now overwriting title tag?
Anyone else noticing this happening? In Google search results, many of my sites are now showing up in the following fashion... "Site name: page title" I read a few articles in the past few days that state that Google may be playing with the algo but have not read anything from Google directly. I should add that I first noticed this on Feb. 21 and have seen it rolling out more and more since. I have only noticed it on a few competitor websites thus far. Edit:Some links talking about the subject http://www.seroundtable.com/google-brand-title-appending-16432.html http://semandseo.blogspot.ca/2013/03/google-brand-title-in-search.html http://www.designbigger.com/blog/seo/google-rewrites-page-titles-to-push-brand-over-keywords/
Algorithm Updates | | mattylac0 -
Will Ranking Reports be Affected with the new Google Changes?
For example: Raven stopped use of scraped Google, SEMRush data on Jan. 2 Raven stopped offering unauthorized Google SERP rankings and keyword data (a.k.a. scraped Google data) on Jan. 2, 2013. The change included the retirement of the SERP Tracker and the elimination of SEMRush data from the Raven platform. Raven has released new SEO performance reports that make it easy to show clients the impact of campaigns to improve organic traffic. Raven will continue to upgrade reports through the year. We thank the many customers who continue their business with Raven. More details about the SEO performance reports and other recent releases are available Is SEOMoz protected in some way? Or will you have to give up rankings reports too?
Algorithm Updates | | MSWD0 -
What is the critical size to reach for a content farm to be under google spot?
We're looking for building a content farm, as an igniter for another site, so there will be some duplicate content. Is it a good or a bad strategy in terms of SEO.
Algorithm Updates | | sarenausa0