Content Updating. How big it should be?

[peterko]

Originally Posted by sniperhiga

Just want to share...
Recently I promoted site and my client was trying to come back in top 10 with old 2007 page. It was seasonal keyword (popular only when footbal season starts). All our competitors beat us with their new 2008 pages. Even crappy sites rank above us. All we got was 3rd page on Google after hundereds good (quality) backlinks from articles, related forums, social sites, niche (sport) directories.
If we talk about keyword... our site 15 years old with 1000s quality backlinks (.edu, old sites, official sites, media coverage) with every page rank well on Google. As I told before, crappy sites ranked above us.

Yeah, I totally understend what you say. It seams to me you are very experienced person, but how you could explain the reason why crappy sites ranked above you? It's gotta be some explanation, don't you think so.
Appreciate your feedback.

Have a great day

[sniperhiga]

Originally Posted by peterko

Yeah, I totally understend what you say. It seams to me you are very experienced person, but how you could explain the reason why crappy sites ranked above you? It's gotta be some explanation, don't you think so.
Appreciate your feedback.

Have a great day

I don't want to say that it was crappy websites, but it was new blogs and sites which wasn't promoted well (just 20-50 backlinks with many SEO mistakes on pages). I belive they ranked above because they wrote new pages about 2008 football season.
My new blog TechWebMedia about SEO and as you know it is extremely hard to rank for SEO this days. I got good positions from Google for my blog posts.

[swapw]

Originally Posted by James Trotta

I think updating content is overrated. In the ESL niche, for example, many of the highest ranked sites have crap content that hasn't been updated in years. It was crap 5-10 years ago, it's crap now, and Google eats it up and can't get enough...

I think the measuring stick is different for every niche. ESL is a stagnant niche as suppose to the News niche. Without fresh content means digging your own grave. If the niche was like dolphins or something, unless something comes up updating the encyclopedia about them the info will probably stay the same.

-Swapw

[James Trotta]

Interesting theory.

If Google is trying to decide which niches rely on updates and which don't, they will fail. Like the ESL niche, for example. I suppose it's possible that Google decided new content is not important with ESL but if they did decide that they made a big error....

Originally Posted by swapw

I think the measuring stick is different for every niche. ESL is a stagnant niche as suppose to the News niche. Without fresh content means digging your own grave. If the niche was like dolphins or something, unless something comes up updating the encyclopedia about them the info will probably stay the same.

-Swapw

[peterko]

As I mentioned, my site is about supreme clothes discount coupons, and I'm doing content update almost on a daily basis, that's specific of the site. But it looks like it doesn't help too much in terms of raising Google SERP results. It's very possible, something else restrict Google from raising SERP and may be that something else makes more effect than all of my efforts to update content on a regular basis.

So, I even start thinking that content update is not a major factor for improving a website status.

Have a great day

[carrot]

Content will get you site crawled but more importantly using keywords in that content will help the site. Track your keywords and how they are helping your site and make adjustments as needed when needed.

[MrCat]

Originally Posted by peterko
Yeah, I totally understend what you say. It seams to me you are very experienced person, but how you could explain the reason why crappy sites ranked above you? It's gotta be some explanation, don't you think so.
Appreciate your feedback.

So, I even start thinking that content update is not a major factor for improving a website status.

One valid explaination for this is that Google puts more weight on the offpage factors. Having updated increases the crawlability of your site and index rate. This would also depend on the backlinks that you have built for your site - if they were from frequently crawled sites as well.

[sniperhiga]

The best thing is to have blog / news section with valid RSS feeds. Google can crawl your feed and fresh content will apear faster in Google search, Google blog, Google News, and iGoogle for subscribers...