Updating existing content - good or bad?

[BeytzNet]

Hi All,

There are many situations where I encounter the need (or the wish) to update existing content.

Here are few reasons:

1. Some update turned up on the subject that does not justify a new posy / article but rather just adding two lines.
2. The article was simply poorly written yet the page has PR as it is a good subject and is online for quite some time (alternatively I can create a new and improved article and 301 the old one to the new).
3. Improving titles and sub titles of old existing articles.

I would love to hear your thoughts on each of the reasons...

Thanks

[FedeEinhorn]

Matt Cutts from Google pointed out in a WH video that you should update instead of creating new pages with only the updates.

You can point in the old page that the content was updated using "IF-MODIFIED-SINCE".

I can't find the video right now, but I am sure he did say that

[BeytzNet]

Actually does sound familiar somehow even though I know most people are creating new post stating about the change and point to the old one (if there is enough to cover).

What about poorly written articles? Improving titles?

Please explain what you mean by "IF-MODIFIED-SINCE"?

Thanks

[FedeEinhorn]

If you are just updating the title, or rewriting the content, then I would go with the same page instead of creating a new one.

IF-MODIFIED-SINCE is the way of telling spiders that the content has/hasn't changed. You can read more here: http://www.feedthebot.com/ifmodified.html

[BlueprintMarketing]

here is some more information on if modified since

http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-the-if-modified-since-http-header-still-relevant

it seems you want to pay a lot of attention when implementing it to the clock on the server as well as on the actual workstation.

http://redmine.lighttpd.net/boards/2/topics/1999

http://trac.nginx.org/nginx/ticket/93

I hope this is of help,

Tom

[BlueprintMarketing]

• hi Fernando,

long time no see.

The site as a tool that is technically accurate however I just want to point out that if you don't have the tag obviously your link will not qualify but you don't need new hosting as it states here

Here's the example of a tagged link that was done appropriately

http://www.feedthebot.com/tools/if-modified/

here's an example of what happens when I put my homepage and with obviously no tag

Does your webpage support the If Modified Since HTTP header?
enter URL: example - www.feedthebot.com

No.
This website does not support the if modified since http header. Scroll down for details.

Technical stuff:

This tool checked your HTTP headers and received this response ...

Server Response HTTP/1.1 200 OK
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: WP Engine/1.2.0
Date: Thu, 02 May 2013 03:57:11 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive
Keep-Alive: timeout=20
Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
Pragma: no-cache
X-Pingback: http://www.blueprintmarketing.com/xmlrpc.php
X-UA-Compatible: IE=Edge,chrome=1
X-Cacheable: SHORT
Vary: Accept-Encoding,Cookie
Cache-Control: max-age=600, must-revalidate
X-Cache: HIT: 13
X-Cache-Group: normal
X-Type: default
There does not appear to be a "last modified header response"

Therefore, this tool has determined that this URL does not support if modified since.

Web hosts who do support If Modified Since...
We use and recommend using BlueHost for your hosting needs

[MoosaHemani]

In all the 3 cases mentioned in the post, this seems like it is a good idea not to create new posts/pages and update the existing one. Obviously if the article is poorly written so in that case one should update the page after fixing the content of it instead of creating new pages... same is the case for the other 2 scenarios.

I think this video by SEOmoz contains your answer >> http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-interview-googles-matt-cutts-on-redirects-trust-more

Hope this helps!

[julianhearn]

Wikipedia updates content all the time and they seem to rank rather well.

From google's perspective they would rather rank up-to-date content, so yes its got to be a good idea to update. An old page might have links to it, and history with google, so if it had up to date content its got to be better than a brand new page.