What is Content Freshness in Content Marketing and How Does It Impact SEO?

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If you’re like most content marketers, you’re always on the lookout for ways to stay ahead of the competition. One way to do this is by keeping your content fresh. But what does that mean, exactly? And how does content freshness impact SEO? In this blog post, we’ll answer those questions and more!

What is fresh content?

Fresh content is any recently published, updated, or rewritten content. This can be blog posts, articles, news stories, product descriptions – anything that’s new and relevant to your audience. Google and its users appreciate fresh content because it’s more likely to be accurate and up-to-date. This is especially important for searches on trending or time-sensitive topics.

In 2011, Google released an update to its algorithm that prioritizes newer pages with the most up-to-date information. The freshness update impacted at least one result on the page for 35% of searches.

This shows just how important it is to have fresh content on your website if you want to rank well in search results. If you can regularly publish new and relevant content, you’ll be in good shape not only with Google but with your audience as well.

What about those dates?

When you’re looking for information on the internet, it’s easy to assume that all of the pages you find have been published recently. However, that’s not always the case.

In fact, we can identify four different dates associated with any URL that has been published online.

• The “published” date is when the page was first uploaded to the website.
• The “indexed” date is when the crawlers first discovered the page and added it to Google Search.
• The “last crawl” date is when the page was last crawled by those bots.
• And finally, the “modified” date is when the last change was made to the page.

Keep these dates in mind next time you’re searching for something online – you may be surprised at how long ago some of these pages were actually published!

How does Google measure content freshness?

According to Moz, there are a few factors that Google uses to decide how ‘fresh’ your content is:

• Page inception date: This is the date that Google first indexed the page.
• Amount of change to the updated page that shows if the content is regularly refreshed.
• Number of changes to core content of the page: This means changes to the actual content as opposed to just republishing it to alter the date tags.
• Rate of page change: How often new content appears on the page.
• Rate of new page creation: How often new content appears on the website as pages or as blog posts.
• Freshness of backlinks to the page: How many new links the content is receiving from other websites

Is content freshness a Google ranking factor?

It is always important to remember that content freshness is just one of the many factors used to rank content. But it does appear to be one ranking factor that is worth noting.

What are ‘fresh’ queries?

Google and other search gines are always looking for fresh, up-to-date content to provide its users with the most relevant results possible. That’s why it’s important to keep your website’s content fresh, especially if you’re targeting any of the following types of queries.

• Recent events: If you have a website about sports, for example, you’ll want to make sure you’re regularly publishing content about recent games and scores.
• Hot topics: These are the topics everyone is talking about right now. If you want to stay on Google’s good side, make sure your website is offering fresh perspectives on hot topics.
• Recurring events and reports: Google loves users who are interested in staying up-to-date on current affairs. If you have a website about politics, for example, try to publish content around the time of major events like presidential elections.
• Ongoing but always-changing information: Product reviews are a great example of this type of content. If you run an ecommerce website, make sure you’re regularly publishing new product reviews to keep your content fresh.

What are ‘unfresh’ queries?

When it comes to search engine optimization, most people focus on two things: keywords and freshness. While it’s true that keyword selection is important, there are certain query categories where recency has no major impact on the accuracy of the information.

For example, food recipes, historical facts, and evergreen topics are all examples of queries where an older but still-accurate page can compete with a newer page. This is because people who search for these terms are likely looking for basic information that hasn’t changed in the last few years.

So, if you have an older page that is continually gaining new backlinks, it has a good chance of ranking highly in search engine results pages.

How to improve your freshness score: best practices

So now we understand what content freshness is, what can do to tick that box for Google? Here are a few ideas.

Check the SERP

One way to evaluate the level of freshness that users want for a query is to look at the publication dates of the top results.

For example, if you check the first 10 or 20 results and calculate their average age, you can get an idea of how old the results should be.

Ideally, you should also give more weight to the top-ranking results in your calculation, as these are the results that users are most likely to click on. By taking into account the publication dates of the top results, you can ensure that your own content is fresh and relevant to what users are looking for.

Publish new (evergreen) content regularly

How often should you be publishing new content on your website? There’s no hard and fast rule, but the general consensus is that you should aim to publish something new at least once a week. This frequency will help to ensure that your site’s content is kept up-to-date, which is an important factor in Google’s freshness algorithm.

Of course, you don’t always have to be publishing new content on completely new topics. If you have a blog or news section on your site, you can simply update existing posts with new information or commentary.

However, as we learned earlier, your rate of new page creation does factor into your freshness score. So if you want to maximize your chances of appearing in search results, be sure to regularly add fresh content to your site.

Update old content regularly

One Google research publication points out that search engines cannot recrawl every page all the time due to the massive scale of new content being published every day. As a result, Google crawls pages preferentially based on their rate of content update.

By updating old content regularly, you improve your freshness score which can then make it easier for your time-sensitive content to rank. The study found that pages updated as little as three days before being crawled were significantly more likely to be classified as fresh than pages that hadn’t been updated in the past 60 days.

This is good news for businesses who need to publish time-sensitive content, such as news articles or event listings. By keeping older content fresh, they can improve their chances of ranking for relevant keywords.

Prioritize already-ranking content

One of the best ways to improve your website’s ranking is to focus on content that is already doing well. If you have a page that is ranking first for a particular keyword, you should always prioritize that content when updating your website.

By focusing on improving existing content, you can quickly improve your website’s overall ranking. In addition, updating existing content is usually less time-consuming and expensive than creating new content from scratch. As a result, it makes sense to focus your efforts on improving the quality of your already-ranking content.

Actually update your content…

While it may be tempting to change the published date of an article or blog post in an attempt to signal to Google that the content is fresh, this practice is unlikely to have the desired effect. Google puts more emphasis on changes to the main body of the page when determining whether content is relevant and up-to-date.

Therefore, simply adjusting the date/time tags is not enough to fool Google into thinking that your content is new. In addition, fake freshness can backfire by leading to shorter dwell time on your page if users find your content outdated.

Strong engagement metrics are essential for good ranking, so it is best to avoid any practices that could negatively impact these metrics.

…and then actually change the publish date

If you’re hoping to improve your website’s SEO, then you’ll want to make sure you’re following best practices. And one of those best practices is to align the published time Google associates with your URL with the year in your page title. That might sound like a small thing, but it can actually make a big difference in how your website ranks.

Unfortunately, articles where the published time doesn’t match the year in the title are actually fairly common. But if you take the time to make sure everything is aligned, then you’ll be ahead of the curve. And that can only mean good things for your website’s SEO.

Submit to Google through Search Console

After updating your website’s content, you may be wondering how to get Google to recrawl your site and update its listing. One way to do this is to resubmit your sitemap on Google Search Console. This will tell Google that there have been changes to your site and that it should recrawl the pages in question.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that Google will eventually find the changes on its own, so this step is usually not necessary for small changes. For larger changes, though, resubmitting your sitemap can help to speed up the process.

When to update, republish, or publish new content

The answer to the question of whether it’s worth updating your content to improve your ranking on Google depends on how important freshness is for the particular query.

If it’s crucial, you’ll need to update the page frequently or publish new articles on the topic regularly. If it’s important but not critical, you should update the page regularly and consider revising and republishing if the ranking starts to drop. If freshness isn’t important, then focus on creating the best possible guide on the topic.

Ultimately, though, it’s up to you to decide how often to update your content based on your goals and priorities.

When to update content

While it’s true that Google pays more attention to major updates, it’s also true that minor updates to a page are still important. This is because, as we mentioned before, a page’s freshness deprecates over time, no matter how evergreen the content is.

That being said, there are plenty of small updates you can make that will have an impact. For example, you could: add new internal links, update platform screenshots, adjust headings, or add a new item to a list.

By making these kinds of small tweaks, you’ll be able to get more traffic from your evergreen posts without having to do major revisions.

When to revise and republish content

If you have a post or page that’s starting to feel outdated, you might be considering revising it. This can be a great way to give your content a fresh perspective and make sure it’s relevant for your audience. However, before you revise and republish your content, there are a few things you should keep in mind.

First, consider why you’re revising the content. If it’s simply because it’s out of date, a revision may not be necessary. Instead, you could update the published date and leave the content as-is. However, if the content requires a complete overhaul to meet visitors’ needs, then a revision is likely warranted.

Second, think about what type of content you’re revising. If it’s an evergreen topic that will resonate with your audience long-term, then revising and republishing is a good idea. However, if it’s a timely post that will quickly become outdated again, you may want to leave it as-is and simply update the published date periodically.

Finally, when you do revise and republish your content, be sure to share it on social media just as you would any other new article. This will help to boost traffic and ensure that your content reaches the widest possible audience.

When to publish new content

It’s generally a good idea to publish new content regularly, especially if you’re covering a topic that tends to change or evolve over time.

For example, if you write about affiliate marketing trends, it’s a good idea to publish a new article every year. This helps to ensure that your content is fresh and relevant, and it also allows you to target new keywords (like “affiliate marketing [current year]).

Plus, your older posts can provide valuable historical data that can be useful for tracking trends over time.

Keeping that content freshness going

It’s important to keep your content fresh by updating it regularly, whether that means making small changes or revising and republishing content. By keeping your content updated, you’ll not only improve your SEO ranking but also ensure that your visitors have the best possible experience on your website.