Is It Helpful For SEO to Swap Fresh Content

People wonder if it could be helpful for SEO to create multiple pieces of content rather than creating a single piece; and then developing a mechanism to run a swap in order to show a different version after every 30 days. Would this approach be helpful in keeping the freshness index of the page up?

The simple question to ask in this regard is that if it could be helpful for SEO to create a fresh piece of content for a web page and replacing it with the older version.

As far as the first question is concerned, there is no real benefit of developing multiple pieces of content and run a program to show different version after a specific period of time. It is just a waste of time because this is not what we can call freshness.

Google actively tends to understand the content you have on your web pages. And if you change the content without any real purpose, you are not going to get any benefit.

So, what is the freshness all about?

Query Deserves Freshness (QDF)

Google’s Caffeine Update was released back in 2011. This update allowed Google to index the web pages more quickly. This update also enabled Google to favor, in some cases, the fresh content on web pages instead of evergreen content.

This is called Query Deserves Freshness or QDF. It states:

“Different searches have different freshness needs. This algorithmic improvement is designed to better understand how to differentiate between these kinds of searches and the level of freshness you need, and make sure you get the most up to the minute answers.”

And it is unfortunate that QDF has become one of the most misunderstood concepts.

Even some of the SEOs suggest replacing the older content with fresh content on periodic basis because Google, according to their opinion, always prefers fresh content.

It is not true.

The requirement of fresh content for a page to be indexed well against specific queries is entirely case-specific.

And QDF doesn’t always matter in every case.

Scenarios in which the QDF matters

When QDF was rolled out, it affected only 30% of all the searches.

If you have a recipe site in which you have a spaghetti recipe from your grandmother, you certainly do not need to change the content of this recipe if it is already providing required details. Similarly, you do not need to change the content which explains Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

But of course, there are some forms of content that need to be replaced or refreshed in order to keep the users informed. For instance, you are going to have to keep your viewers informed well about the recent events or hot topics by either replacing the content or simply adding the follow up content.

Moreover, you will also need to change content on the pages which are meant to provide information about regularly recurring events. For instance, if you are writing about the election campaigns which are run on yearly basis, you are going to need to change the content according to the current scenario. The same queries, which were used by the users last year, would lead them to the updated content.

Furthermore, there are also searches for the content which doesn’t fall under the category of hot topics or regularly recurring events. For instance, any new release of a hardware or software would require you to update the content in order to provide users information about new releases.

How to Get Enhanced Meaningful Web Traffic on Web Content

It’s a matter of simple observation that SEOs and internet marketers exert too much of their energy on strengthening the backlink profile while ignoring the internal linking almost completely. Link building from both these aspects do not give a ‘pick one’ option but they both need to be worked upon with equal attention.

With the help of internal link building, you can actually help the visitors by guiding them to explore your website beyond main menu. Another equal and real benefit of internal linking is that it makes it easier for the search engine bots to crawl through your website in more efficient manner. Lesser time taken during the crawling process is counted as a positive prospect of a website by search engines.

Internal links provide an insight of deeper web content

With the help of successful internal building, you can create different pathways within your own website. The meaningful pathways involve connection between pages of relevant context, making entire navigation process not only interesting for visitors but easier for search engine.

There is another benefit of internal linking. While we have a common perception that visitors land on the home page, they can actually enter your website from any other page such as ‘Contact’ or ‘About’. These pages, especially the Contact, usually have little amount of text. Putting some logical content in these pages and placing links to other pages of the website can persuade the visitors to explore other pages of your website. For example, there is a very little chance of your blog posts to get indexed in Google very quickly. What you can do is putting the list of the blog posts in the body of pages that perform well. This way, the visitors would be able to get relevant information about your product or service from relevant blog post whose link is pointed at from the website page.

Advantage of internal links for SEO

The even bigger advantage of an effective internal linking is that search engine bots quickly find and crawl through the deeper pages that are linked to the main pages. Internal linking produces and spreads a ‘link juice’ upon the mesh of link structure, making it convenient for the search engine spiders to cover your website efficiently.

This convenience for the search engine spiders and bots is actually beneficial for the Indianapolis SEO of your website. Google gives special preference to the websites which offer easier navigation.

How can you link pages internally in an effective way?

There are a few methods that can make internal linking of your website fruitful.

• Analysis of linking structure is the first and most important thing. You can use free tools like Open Site Explorer to get the link structure analyzed.
• ‘Orphan’ pages are the ones that can’t be found from main menu. These types of pages can linked with the main pages.
• Make sure that links are being explained by the anchor texts at first look.
• Anchor texts should be recognizable by their prominent colors. If the color of anchor text is not different from the text around it, the chances of those links to be clicked will reduce drastically, hurting the purpose of internal linking.
• Adding too many links in one page is counted as a spam practice. Make sure you are avoiding it.
• Make links natural from the readers’ point of view rather than targeting the search engines only.