How important is fresh content?

[Ram8349]

So many people say that SERP and traffic will drop if the site does not constantly get fresh content.

Is it true?

 

What if it is a micro niche that can only have so much content? What if 20 articles are enough to cover everything about this micro niche and nothing more can be talked about? Will the pages drop in SERP and traffic over time if no fresh content is added?

 

What is your opinion? Is fresh content abosutely necessary? Is it abosutely needed for the case above?

[Jessi]

There is ALWAYS something new you can provide. Even the most bizarre niches will have something related come up at some point and you can create a new article about it.

[bryce12]

I don't think fresh content is absolutely necessary. Having said that, search engines prefer sites that update their content on a regular basis. I would suggest that you look at trends within your niche and write on a popular topic from time to time.

[GregH]

I think fresh content plays quite a large role in keeping the traffic constant or increasing in numbers. I have sat here for the past 5 minutes trying to think of a site that wouldn't require any new content. None come to mind. All websites are usually updated with new content or new features. It's the constant increase in size that keeps people coming, and keeps the Search engine bots coming too.

[Siddharth Ramakrishnan]

Fresh content is need to make the site much busy and make users to interact. It will result in SEO too.

[machtm]

The saying is "Content is King" and it's definitely the truth. I'm not sure if fresh content really affects google SERPs and your ranking. I know that statistics and traffic can definitely affect your search engine ranking. The more content the better, you want to make sure your site is coming up when as many key words relating to your subject are searched for by someone as much as possible.

[KMRock]

Fresh content is vital to continue to receive regular users/visitors. If content isn't updated you will not get much return traffic.

[Victor Leigh]

There are two ways to get fresh content. One is fresh information. The other way is to have a look at old information from a new angle. A new perspective also qualifies as fresh content.

[ridwan sameer]

Traffic can drop int he way of recurring visitors.. You may be able to continously get new visitors (although those figures will drop down aswell), But people who came to your site once wont keep coming back if nothing's changing and no content is appearing

[KMRock]

So true, its like a dead forum, why keep visiting if there isn't any new posts!

[bigbigfan]

I just don't buy into the need for fresh content as much as others do apparently, I see Google serving me stale content all the time. I think fresh is important if your site gets a following to see new content but if that's not happening the freshness isn't as important. I own sites that are evergreen, they were built and no longer need updating, and these do quite well when the quality is high.

 

I go back to my evergreen content to update it and improve it more than I create new content for these types of sites, it works for me.

[KMRock]

Yeah fair enough, whatever works best for you is what you should do!

[johnthomas1433]

Absolutely not. But if you check the indexing rate of your website by search engines like Google, you shall see that they shall drop considerably if you are not providing fresh content regularly. Because what's the point of them indexing the same thing again and again if there is no change to it?

[Victor Leigh]

Just curious. Supposing we have old content. Then we just add a line of update data on it. Would that be enough to get the search engines excited about it again. I mean, just one single line. With a little bit of new content. Is that enough?

[Nathan]

Just curious. Supposing we have old content. Then we just add a line of update data on it. Would that be enough to get the search engines excited about it again. I mean, just one single line. With a little bit of new content. Is that enough?

Depends on a lot of factors so hard to answer that question.

 

If the data is indexed and good content it won't drop in the SERPS due to age.

[bigbigfan]

Just curious. Supposing we have old content. Then we just add a line of update data on it. Would that be enough to get the search engines excited about it again. I mean, just one single line. With a little bit of new content. Is that enough?

 

Google search bots occasionally make what is known as a HEAD request. This is a request for only the server response information but NOT the content on the page. From the server response they can tell if the size of the page has changed and if it has they may come and crawl it again sometime soon. When sites get large and content is infrequently updated it's more efficient to just use a HEAD request and so in this case, if you update even a line of content, you might trigger a real Google search.

 

Google was first spotted making HEAD requests in 2004 I believe so it's nothing new. It seems to be in use on some sites more than others.

[johnthomas1433]

Just curious. Supposing we have old content. Then we just add a line of update data on it. Would that be enough to get the search engines excited about it again. I mean, just one single line. With a little bit of new content. Is that enough?

 

Even if you edit the page and republish the page without changing anything, the date of the post shall vary, and this is enough for Google to see it as an updated content. You do not even have to add a new line.

[bigbigfan]

Matt Cutts discussed fresh content as a ranking factor on a youtube video. It's worth listening to.

 

Freshness is NOT an important factor for all sites.

Edited January 16, 2013 by bigbigfan

[KMRock]

Cheers for the video share, I'll check it out now!

[bigbigfan]

You do that KMRock and while you're at it why don't you share your thoughts about it too? You know, these crazy forums are set up so that people can share their opinions, it would be a good idea to have one, don't you agree? 

[KMRock]

Haha true. I like the points about evergreen content for business sites.

 

And the pointless updating of past pages seems true.

 

I'm still a fan of fresh content though.

[bigbigfan]

Evergreen content sites are the best kind imo, you write authoritative articles once covering each aspect of a topic and you don't need to continually maintain the site afterwards. Sites with definitive how-to guides for example do really well with an evergreen setup.

[themdno]

I think fresh content is important, but once you get a good article that has a high ranking, it may be hard to duplicate that again. Of course, the more spots you hold, the better. But, if it's really worth it, I don't know. I think covering all of your keywords fully, and then building those up, is the best practice.

[Jessi]

I think fresh content is important, but once you get a good article that has a high ranking, it may be hard to duplicate that again.

 

Definitely. That's when you can focus on slightly different keywords....or long-tail keywords, etc, instead. Doing follow-up articles can also get more follow-through traffic from that article that is getting great traffic/ranks already by interlinking. 

[Dominic27]

I believe after the last penguin update back in August 2012, quality and fresh content has become a very important factor in the SEO process. Google bots give more importance to quality content blogs, articles, reviews and press releases.