Mediarun Search Marketing News

Old content should be updated for SEO purposes

May 4th 2010

Search Engine Optimisation News

As websites grow in size it is often tempting to keep old web pages as they were when they were first published - especially if they still rank highly for specific search engine marketing keywords.

But according to search engine optimisation expert Stephan Spencer, hanging on to old content can have a detrimental impact on a company's SEO strategy if they are not careful.

Writing for Practical Ecommerce, Mr Spencer claimed that a high Google ranking does not mean that a webpage should be left to its own devices.

He claimed that constantly updating search engine marketing content will ensure webpages continue to gather links - long after the content's original publication date. "An outdated page tends to stagnate in terms of its link authority," Mr Spencer told the news provider.

"I know sometimes folks are wary of making changes to a page for fear of ruining what Google likes about the page and possibly tanking the page's rankings. But, don't worry; if you somehow 'break' the page's SEO while tinkering with its content, you can always restore it to the original version." He concluded.

He claimed that good search engine optimisation requires constant revision and updating - something that can be extremely time consuming without the support of a professional SEO Company.

"The 'set it and forget it' mentality isn't compatible with top-notch SEO. You can always wring more performance out of a web page or document by optimising it further with improvements to the keyword targeting, keyword prominence, HTML mark-up, and other means," he added.

Updating past content is just one of the many considerations marketers need to address when improving upon the search engine optimisation strategy, but it is also one of the most time-consuming and potentially tricky.

Ever-evolving search engine trends make it difficult without the right knowledge and understanding to stay ahead of the competition.

This has been highlighted recently in research by SEO industry expert Greenlight, which showed that many top fashion brands have begun to lose their high search engine results page rankings for key fashion search terms - despite a 13 per cent increase in fashion-related searchers since December of last year.

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