Another year has passed and we have stepped into an entirely new decade. Google has grown older, smarter, and is now able to understand and interpret our content better than ever before. Hopefully, we as site owners have also become smarter—we have at least grown a year older. Likewise, the content on our websites has aged and, in some cases, become outdated.
For that reason, in this article we will discuss what you as a site owner can do to update, improve, and even recycle your outdated content. Welcome to 2020!
Does Google favor new content?
Those of you familiar with the once very popular series “How I Met Your Mother” have probably also heard Barney Stinson utter the famous words “New is ALWAYS better.” But is that really the case when it comes to Google’s algorithm?
Those of us working with SEO are often asked whether new and fresh content is better if you want to rank for your chosen keywords. The answer, as with most things in SEO… drumroll… is that it depends!
New is not necessarily always better, but quite often content needs to be updated and refreshed in order to provide the best possible answer to a search query. This is especially true if you operate in a constantly changing industry. If Barney Stinson had been an SEO specialist, he would probably have chanted “Relevant is ALWAYS better!”
The importance of new and fresh content
Depending on the industry you are in, the importance of new and fresh content varies. A news website, by definition, always has new articles in its feed, while a plumber does not have the same need to write about the latest developments in their industry. It is therefore up to you as a site owner to determine how time-sensitive your content is.
We would like to emphasize that there is no point in updating content just for the sake of updating it. There must be a reason for doing so. That reason could be, for example, that there is additional information that can make the answer to the search query even more relevant than before, or that the existing content has become outdated.
For instance, a travel website may need to update content whenever there are changes its readers should be aware of. This becomes especially important when writing about time-sensitive topics, such as “When is Chinese New Year celebrated?”, since the date changes from year to year.
Having new and fresh content is important for Google, which evaluates how current and trustworthy what you write is (it is no secret that Google knows Chinese New Year took place on January 25, 2020).
It is also important for users, as increasingly outdated information can cause readers to lose trust in your site. It would not be very fun to celebrate Chinese New Year all by yourself, a week after everyone else.
As Google continues to improve its ability to understand content, site owners must become increasingly attentive to ensuring that what is published on their site reflects today’s reality. You can no longer get away with having outdated content.
How do you identify outdated content?
There are several ways to identify outdated content. The absolute best approach is to read through your content and ensure that it is still accurate and relevant in this new decade. However, this process can be time-consuming, especially if the website you are working with contains a large amount of content. For that reason, we would like to list a few additional methods for identifying content that may need further optimization.
Analyze which pages are performing worse than before
With the help of Google Search Console and Google Analytics, it is now easy to view statistics for your website. One indication that something is performing worse is a declining click-through rate or an increasing bounce rate. You can also look at whether the average position has changed, or worse yet, whether conversions have stalled.
If you notice clear changes in any of these areas, it may be worth taking a closer look at those specific pages. Again, this approach can be used for all types of websites, but we primarily recommend it for larger sites where manually reviewing all content is not feasible.
Look at what content Google has indexed
By performing a so-called “site search” on Google, you as a site owner can see what type of content Google has indexed. This can be a good idea if you know that you have written something that is no longer relevant. For example, if Zlatan has changed clubs… again, you can type: site:yourdomain.com “Zlatan” to see all indexed articles that mention “Zlatan.”
This method also works for years and longer phrases—just remember to put longer phrases within quotation marks.
Analyze outdated content using crawler tools
In some cases, certain pages may not appear in a site search, or there may be so many pages that it becomes difficult to manually manage the content in a clear way. In such cases, you can turn to crawler tools such as Screaming Frog. We will not go into detail here on how to extract specific information using this tool—you can read more about that on screamingfrog.co.uk.
The important thing is that it can be done, and that you can extract exactly which pages contain the word or phrase you have chosen to look for.
If you have access to Screaming Frog (or another crawling tool), you can also use it to identify which external pages your site links to that no longer work. Updating these links is also important, as having too many broken links can be frustrating for both Google and users.
Which content should you get rid of?
There is, of course, content that cannot be salvaged—but that does not mean it should simply be deleted. It can be recycled. Smart, right?
Content that you can get rid of and “recycle” includes, for example:
- Products and/or services you no longer offer (and do not plan to offer in the future)
- Job listings (that have already been filled)
- Profile pages for former employees
- Duplicate pages
By “recycle,” we mean that these types of pages can be redirected using a 301 redirect so that you do not lose any potential link equity. This solution works well in most cases.
In conclusion – Date-stamping your posts
As many of you may know, it is possible to date-stamp your posts so that the date appears directly in the search results. This is, of course, beneficial during the first year—and perhaps even the second. After that, however, the date stamp can become more of a disadvantage than an advantage.
Often, users see a post from 2013 and avoid clicking it because there are newer, mo
