Comments on: How Often Should I Update my Web Pages?

By: Josh Spaulding

Josh Spaulding — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 17:53:18 +0000

@ Catherine – Yep, and that’s only one example.

@ YC – Great to see you stop by. I haven’t seen you around for a while

That’s right, testing is what it’s all about. Things change regularly. However, the most important things rarely change ie. quality incoming links.

@ Steve – Thanks for the compliment! I build those links through several means ie. article marketing, select link exchanges etc.

By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 04:27:15 +0000

Josh,
Great post, and the one on myths you mention from Jon is a good one also. I enjoyed both. On one of the above post you mention about leaving the site for a year without updating and it attained page one status for “make money online” I think you said. Question, you then say that you just worked on the links. Did you mainly do this through your articles or other means? How did you continue to build those links?
Thanks and I enjoy your work,
Steve

By: YC

YC — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 09:07:02 +0000

Hey Josh, I’m quite sure links are definitely critical. I don’t believe that constant quality content is as important anymore after seeing a blog of mine continue to outrank other (top & better) blogs for a term that they keep writing about due to everyday news but I stopped a long time back. in fact, if I wanted to, I’d just stick a few more of the long tail keywords that show up in my logs into the existing content and they’ll continue to leave the other sites behind. It’s much easier than writing whole new content. Of course, I’m no expert either, I just keep doing what works for me, and try what guys like you recommend.

By: Best Posts for the Week of February 4th 2008

Best Posts for the Week of February 4th 2008 — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:03:43 +0000

[...] How Often Should I Update my Web Pages? [...]

By: CatherineL

CatherineL — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:16:50 +0000

Hi Josh – that’s interesting. So they’re both ranking well despite having duplicate content and not being updated? I sometimes wonder how great Google search really is.

By: Josh Spaulding

Josh Spaulding — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:53:47 +0000

Hey Caroline, nice to see you stopped by.

I don’t know for sure, but I’d imagine the age would be determined by either the registration date or the first indexing of any given page, so updates wouldn’t affect the weight given for aging. I may be wrong through.

By: Caroline Middlebrook

Caroline Middlebrook — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:24:28 +0000

Don’t forget also that domain age has quite a heavy weighting in the serps so those sites that haven’t been updated in 2 years are seen by Google as mature domains so that may help their rankings.

By: Josh Spaulding

Josh Spaulding — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:15:59 +0000

@ Allen – I’m not afraid to go against the grain if I see something contrary to popular belief. I may be wrong, but so far I don’t believe I am. Thanks for the comment.

@ John – I think the belief that you have to worry about “everything” in order to rank well for competitive terms is hugely over-exaggerated! I haven’t done any testing on recent news, so I take people’s word for it there; it makes sense. For the most part, like I’ve said a million times, it’s all about the links, not updated content or anything else. There are loads of other factors integrated into their algorithm, but the # and quality of links proves to be the #1 factor. In other words, we don’t need to be SEO experts to rank well. I’m no expert and I rank well for many competitive terms and phrases.

By: John Hunter

John Hunter — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 01:49:15 +0000

I would agree with the idea that updates can help but it is only one of many factors. For very competitive terms practically everything needs to be in your favor to show up well (so new content and lots of other stuff too). Also Google states they provide extra timeliness boosts to search terms that seem to be about recent news (so if there is all sorts of news about the Super Bowl they will provide a positive bias for recently news…). Tons of stuff that hasn’t been updated in a decade ranks well (new incoming links probably helps a good deal – plus tons of existing links…).

By: Allen

Allen — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:22:17 +0000

It’s nice to hear someone say this out loud. I’ve often wondered if it was the case, as I’ve had sites that I haven’t updated for a year or more out of sheer laziness that continued to rise in the listings. In fact, as soon as I made a change, the SERPs positioning changed and then settled back again. I’m itching to hear what you’ve got to say on duplicate content!