Fresh Content Still As important?
-
We have an internal debate, that perhaps y'all can help us resolve.
In the past "freshness" of content has been important, correct? (Google's QDF for example) In the past (to present) when we build a site with the intent to SEO the site, we build the core pages with the expectation that we will be adding more site pages as the project progresses, thus settling the "fresh content" factor.
But it has been proposed to us, from a client, that completely building the site out with all the pages you hope to rank, getting the upfront bang for your buck. The expectation is that the traffic soars right-off.
Now the client says that he has been doing this for years and has not been affected by any alog changes. (although we have not seen proof of this from him)
So our question is this: Is it better to provide a website full of fresh content at the beginning of the project, for a jumpstart on traffic, then leave the site alone ( for the most part)
or
Is it better to have core pages of fresh content at the start, and build out new pages from their, so the website remains fresh every month?
And can you prove your argument? (we need cold hard facts to be convinced
-
EGOL, a big time member on these forums posted years ago that there will be a day when the only thing that a search engine truly judges a website on is Keywords and content. Now I'm not entirely sure I'm completely on board with that (I'm about 95%), but I do agree that content, especially after the recent SE updates, has shifted back into power.
My father owns a business, we make educational materials for people with mild to severe autism. He is very successful, and he personally doesn't have the time or energy to spend in writing a daily blog, and unfortunately doesn't trust anybody to ghost write for him.
So we came up with an alternative. A combo of original content mixed with educational reports, interesting studies, and every now and then some strange funny story from theOnion. We would post at least one original piece a week, if we could 2, and then everything else from there. I made a few Bullying Infographics for his business to post and share on social media. Now, it wasn't always keyword heavy content, but as long as it was content worth sharing, it did get us a lot of links.
At the end of the day, if I have to make a decision on how Google is doing something, I try to remind myself Google is in the business of making money. They do that by providing the best, accurate, human, natural, semantic, organic, pefect-beacue-I-am-a-snowflake, result. Google, in my opinion, will take how current the website is, into account.
Content is King.
-
This is our thought as well. A continuous feed of fresh content is a better approach than a one off. This is how we've been doing it, but we're really interested in knowing if others have tried this other approach, with any lasting sustainability in traffic or ranking. ( we kind of doubt it, but would love to see proof that it works)
-
The QDF is aimed at hot/current topics right ? So while it might be important for a news site or a celebrity gossip site I don't think it will be relevant for every site.
You have mentioned that the client has proposed to build the site with "all the pages you hope to rank for", which means the topic is restrictive and there is a limit to what you can write about the subject. But then to launch the site with this approach you need to get all the content ready and that might take some time.
A much more sensible approach would be to launch the site with a reasonable amount of content and then add the rest of the content when possible. This way you can start with the link building, social sharing process early.
I don't think just because you launch a site with lots of fresh content it will give you a jump start in traffic, but I'm interested to see if anyone had success with this method.
-
Fresh content is definitely important and while you may get the boost at the start you'll quickly loose it if you're not putting up new content.
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
-
E-commerce data import Google Analytics
Hi there, Since a few weeks we have started a cooperation with a big online wholesale company which now sells our products. I want to import simple E-commerce data: amount of transactions and revenue. More detailed data such as amount of products, name of products, etc. is not necessary in the first place. Now I discovered the 'data import' functionality in Google Analytics but I can't find any suitable option for E-commerce data import. The data from the wholesale company is gathered in a nice export in a separate system, so there should be a way ti import this data into Analytics. Could anybody help me with this? Any advice is welcome! Thanks in advance.
Reporting & Analytics | | MarcelMoz
Marcel0 -
Moz analytics showing joomla tag feature as duplicate page content
Moz Analytics is showing Joomla 3 tag pages as Duplicate Page Content because many articles are tagged with multiple words and therefore show up on the same tag-pages. example URL: www.domain.com/tag/tagID-tagname I already added "tag" as a URL parameter with Crawl=No URLs. Is there anything else I should do?
Reporting & Analytics | | modernmagic0 -
Google Analytics Content Experiments - Experiment Conversions and Goal Figures Don't Match
Hi, I set up a new content experiment 6 days ago, the experiment says there have been 2 conversions but the goal associated with it says 5. The experiment is set to target 100% of traffic, distributed evenly among the variations, the goal is a destination URL goal. I've doubled checked the goal set up and everything seems fine. How can the content experiment report a different figure to the goal associated with it? Has anyone else noticed the same problem? Is this a bug? Is there a workaround available? Or is there a setting I need to be aware of when creating content experiments to prevent this from happening? I need to know I can trust the results the content experiments provide.
Reporting & Analytics | | UNIT40 -
Google Analytics - Still Seeing Keyword Data
Hi, I hope you can answer this question for me, obviously I'm aware of the changes regarding "not provided" in analytics however I am still getting keyword referral data in analytics (not much of course!) in the section Acquisition>Keyword>Organic Can anybody explain why I am still seeing organic keyword data even up until yesterday for the odd term? I cannot find an answer anywhere!!! Many thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | splendidapple1 -
Analytics - content performance
Hi guys, is there any way to group specific pages together in analytics and just see how they have peroformed visit wise, etc? I need to group some resort guides all with different names, it's tedious going through each one manually. Help much appreciated as always!
Reporting & Analytics | | pauledwards0 -
If you have G+ buttons on your site, does google still suggest you add them?
We've had G+ buttons on the site for many months now (Can't remember exactly when they were added.) Yet in Google Webmaster Tools, they still give me this message: "Get more recommendations in Google Search and grow your audience on Google+. Add the Google+ badge to your site." Is this happening to everyone, or is it just me? Do they think the buttons aren't there? Also, they say this: "Your site doesn't have enough +1's yet to show characteristics." According to the stats, 551 unique people have +1'd our pages. How many does it take, to get stats? Anyone willing to give stats?
Reporting & Analytics | | loopyal0 -
How serious are the Duplicate page content and Tags error?
I have a travel booking website which reserves flights, cars, hotels, vacation packages and Cruises. I encounter a huge number of Duplicate Page Title and Content error. This is expected because of the nature of my website. Say if you look for flights between Washington DC and London Heathrow you will at least get 60 different options with same content and title tags. How can I go about reducing the harm if any of duplicate content and meta tags on my website? Knowing that invariably I will have multiple pages with same content and tags? Would appreciate your advice? S.H
Reporting & Analytics | | sherohass0 -
Regex in Analytics for longtail content
I have spent quit some time now, trying to figure this out. I wannt to segment landingoage traffic to the longtail content. That's content in the 3rd or 4th subdirectorylevel. I would like to do that by saying google: "Just show me traffic that arrives on landingpages with 3 OR 4 slashes "/" But I can't get a solution, can anybody help in the seoMOZ community?
Reporting & Analytics | | viventuraSEO0