Better to update or add articles?

[Essentia]

Hi,

We have an online gift store and we write new blogs every year. Question is, if we already had a blog that's called 'Top Valentine Gifts' from last year,should we update the blog content with the most updated data,

or should we add a new blog called 'Top Valentine Gifts 2012' and rename the old one to 'Top Valentine Gifts 2011' (and 301 redirect the old URL)?

Which one is more beneficial in terms of SEO?

[KaneJamison]

If you have evergreen content that's going to repurposed every year, it's definitely best to have a URL without the year, unless the year is relevant to the content*.

If it were my site, I would create a new page (not blog post), titled /top-valentine-gifts/ or whatever you choose, and create a link on the 2011 page to the new page - something like "Click here to see the best valentine gifts". Feel free to make the title & h1 for the page say 2012 and update that each year, just don't include it in the URL.

If you're concerned about blog subscribers seeing the content in the blog section or the RSS feed, then I would create a blog post along the lines of "Best Valentine's Day Gifts for 2012" that has some unique content that is valuable for this year, and link that to the primary page that has content relevant to all years.

*** If the year is relevant to the content:**
One example of where I would use the year in a page URL is if the content was going to be relevant only to that year, such as Best Movies of 2011 or 2012 Olympics. If there is value to keeping that content around for years with the original content on it, then that's a good argument for creating new pages for each event.

If you're really savvy, keep tabs on who links to your 2012 Olympics content, so that you can contact those people when 2014 rolls around...

[JamesNorquay]

Make the new page for 2012 and then link it from the 2011 page.

Believe me I am all for adding year values on websites, you would be surprised how many people search with the year value it is a crucial element.

I would start the social buzz, articles, blogging, link building for the page as valentines day is soon.