If you’ve worked with SEO, you’ve probably heard it before – keep your content fresh and it will rank high.
But why is fresh content an SEO factor. And if that statement was ultimately true, does that mean that everything newly released is going to outrank old posts? ANd how come new posts take so long to rank then? If Google wants to incentivize fresh content, why does it take so long for your website to have any meaningful search engine rankings?
Here, I aim to help you understand the search engine better – and do the right things when it comes to ranking. After all, the competition is getting tougher by the day across all niches. Additionally, producing content is a task that requires resources – either your own time and efforts where you could have been doing something else – or money for skilled writers.
I’ll address these questions here and provide some answers that will ultimately, hopefully make it all easier for you.
Why Is Content Freshness An SEO Factor?
Fresh content is an SEO factor mainly because of user intent. Whether you should regularly update your content generally depends on the topic and niche you’re in. That is because some content requires fresh content more than others.
The official ranking algorithm patent from Google calles the factor “Query Deserves Freshness”. This is an algorithmic model that aims to qualify the search – and thus decide whether you need fresh or old content. As per the original patent, there are three main categories of topics that are considered in “Query Deserves Freshness” and display more recent content in favor of older content. These categories are: recent events (i.e. news), regularly recurring events (i.e. elections, yearly festivals), and information that is subject to change more often (e.g. best books this year).
Are New Blog Posts Going To Outrank Old Posts?
As with almost everything in SEO, this depends. And while we can spit many theories here, the real answer is that whether old posts outrank new posts ultimately comes down to the topic and search intent which determine whether QDF is applied.
When Does Fresh Content Outrank Older Content?
For some topics, such as news, all things being equal, fresher content will always outperform older content. This is also rooted in our own behavior – and therefore the search intent – if you’re looking for a public figure who has done something in the past, you’re more likely to click on a more recent result because you expect to see new and fresh information about the subject.
Say, for example, that we’re searching for news around Bernie Madoff. Again, all things being equal, you’re likely to click on the fresher result because you expect that there was more to the investigation as time passes. Now, we don’t actually know whether the content is absolutely the same on both pages – we just have our expectations that more recent content will contain fresher and better information. This can happen for both older topics – but also for news that is considered still fresh.
In fact, this very thing happened to me just recently. For a news subject that was still ongoing, I decided to click the newest possible article – even though i knew there was nothing new about the subject and I’m likely going to only rehearse old information.
This is also why you often hear (especially around the end of the year) advice from big SEO professionals that you should update the “year” you use in your articles’ titles, meta descriptions, and content body.
But that’s not always the best advice. Let me tell you why.
When Does Older Content Outrank Fresh Content?
Now, on the other hand, you’ve probably seen queries with content that is a few years old. If you haven’t noticed them, I can guarantee you they exist. To see why that happens, once again we have to assume everything is equal and take a look at search behavior.
However, just before we do that it’s important to mention that content that does not fall under the QDF algorithm and is not considered fresh content isn’t simply called “old content” – because that carries a negative connotation. Instead, we use the term “Evergreen Content” to describe those pieces that are not subject to changes all too often.
Usually, content for topics that do not “require” new information – e.g. established subjects such as religion, science, etc has the tendency to sometimes rank older posts higher up than new posts.
The problem with this is, however, that you can’t “control” the process and “know” whether users want new or old information. Again think about user behavior – even if it’s an old and known subject, do you think your users are likely to click on the new result expecting to see something new about it? I’d place my bet that they do.
To give you an example of where fresh content might outperform new content, imagine you’re googling for your favorite celebrity. Most of the time, people want to read about their backgrounds and personal stories. In this case, you usually don’t have a lot of fresh content in the first place.
But once again, we have to look at search intent. Imagine, for example, some celebrity is present in the news for something they did. People hear about it, and naturally want to learn more. They Google the name of the celebrity and browse around. After not finding anything about the subject, they append their search query to look specifically for the new information.
Now, this is a direct signal to Google that something is happening and that it should change the order of search results. And therefore, you get ranking changes, rich snippets, video snippets and news websites appearing in the search.
How To Know When To Update Your Content?
Updating your content regularly is natural and as we explained Google incentives that because that’s what the users want to see. To know exactly when it’s time to update your content, it’s important that you monitor the SERPs and your keyword rankings in your favorite SEO tool. If you see a shift or change in rankings – if there’s a downward trend – it’s likely a signal that it’s time to update your content.
Also, remember that updating the content will not immediately push your rankings back up. That is, Google has to re-crawl your page first and adjust its pagerank. Usually, you can expect that to happen 1-2 days after the page has been re-crawled – which is something you can see in your Google Search Console’s “Coverage” & “URL Inspection” tools.
So Is It Better To Update My Content?
As we just saw, the ultimate reason for you updating your content shouldn’t be Google themselves. From the past few years, we’ve seen a hard transition from pure SEO factors to more user-oriented metrics rooted in UX & User Intent. This is confirmed every year – and this year we’re seeing a new big update that is adding to it. We’re, of course, talking about the May 2021 Google Page Experience Update that the search giant has scheduled to roll out. This is the update where Google introduces Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor – which is yet another ranking factor grounded in User Experience.
