Why Fresh Content Matters for SEO

Google executive John Mueller announced in 2018 that the search engine giant does not favour newer content over old or existing content. Following further conversation on Twitter, Mueller responded by reiterating that although Google still does not favour fresh content, it does index the fresh content pages more frequently than old web pages which have not been updated in a long time.

For the SEO community, this was confusing. This suggests a bit of acontradiction to the previously well-used SEO phrase ‘content is king’. The statement released by Google and John Mueller indicated that while content is still incredibly important, fresh new content is now more important than large quantities of older content when it comes to successful SEO strategies.

While Mueller didn’t come right out and confirm that fresh content will result in a website’s success, Google’s mission statement to provide the best experience for users would seem to indicate that new content would be more valuable to the user experience.

So, what are the benefits that come with having new, fresh content for your website?

Fresh Content Means Regular Indexing

Search engines are relying on robots or ‘crawlers’ to identify and index new content from websites. Websites that are frequently updated with fresh content are more likely to endure a faster indexing rate across the entire website.

Marketing outlet Hubspot published a 2017 report indicating that sites that published sixteen or more blog posts per month saw four times as much traffic as those who published less than four times in a month. More blog posts and more updated content on your website means that you will enjoy a greater opportunity for inbound links and indexing.

So, whether it’s on your landing pages, blog pages, or other web pages, having a regular flow of new and fresh content to your website means fast indexing across the rest of your website. The more you update your website with your new articles, landing pages and content, the more often search engines are going to crawl and index your website. If your website has a higher indexation, you are far more likely to achieve higher rankings with the content you are putting out.

It is important to remember however that you do need to continue putting out good fresh content, content that users genuinely gain value from and will read. Although it is clear fresh content means faster indexing, the articles, blogs, and landing pages still need to be filled with good quality content.

• Fresh content indicates a healthy business
• Fresh content means more opportunities to rank for a variety of relevant keywords
• Search engine robots and crawlers are constantly on the lookout for new content
• Regular content encourages more return users
• Google favours websites that are active – by posting fresh content you will experience further benefits across your entire website

One Adelaide marketing executive has weighed in on the revelation and explained that for websites that aren’t able to commit to publishing frequent blog posts or updating landing pages, there are other options to ensure faster indexation and improve SEO rankings. They suggested that updating existing content and pages with new text, fresh images or new metadata is one of the most time efficient and perhaps the least talked about ways to improve rankings and warrant regular indexation.

While this may not be as effective as putting out brand new content, websites that regularly update their existing content and their pages are still far more likely to improve their rankings than those who don’t.