How often should I update category and product content to keep it fresh?

[Towelsrus]

I want to keep our site up to date and fresh with content. How often should I update categories and products pages with content? What angel should I take with categories (new products/services etc.)

Thanks Craig

[Dan-Lawrence]

The problem with Products is that they are are hard to update the content for since they usually (but not always) have an 'evergreen' description. Hence a great way to keep the content fresh is to enable customer reviews and comments on the product page and then encourage customers (via your 'post sale touch points' such as follow up emails saying thanks for your order, hows the product ?) to leave a review of the product (& incentivise them to do so via loyalty points/future discounts).  This will mean the product page is continually populated with new fresh content that is also user generated demonstrating customer/user engagement hence showing 'signs of life' from real people too.

[Towelsrus]

Thanks Dan, a good answer.

We already have products reviews, however we have had problems with integrating these so they are passing on seo value as the are provided by a 3rd party, Feefo. A bit of java script supplies the reviews at present.

What's your thought on categories? As I suggested or otherwise?

Appreciate your input.

Craig

[Chris.Menke]

Freshness of a page isn't necessary on all counts, as a page may maintain high rankings in spite of not having been updated for years. For many, if not most website owners, freshness is not going to keep them out of the rankings.

Moving forward though, with social and authorship playing a larger role in rankings, more of your competitors will be finding that effective use of those channels will help lift the authority of their domain, giving them a ranking advantage over you if you're not networking and publishing as well.  I think for most website owners, having active social profiles attached to your domain will be worth paying more attention to than the freshness of their content.

[Towelsrus]

Thanks for the answer. I'll take a closer look at this.

Regards

Craig

[Dan-Lawrence]

In that case i would be looking to closer associate the reviews to the page content.

I would also concentrate on using the blog etc to generate fresh content and deep link (where directly appropriate and helpful for user) from the blog post to the product pages and of course category pages too (re your response and factoring in Chris' good comments too).  Regular fresh unique content (associated/tied to an author & publisher) of a high quality (hence likely to earn social amplification) linked to the relevant categories and product pages (where appropriate & helpful) will do far more toward those pages being perceived well by G than overly concentrating on changing the content in the category & product pages

Hope this helps

ps - I'm going to Worthing for a 40th tomorrow coincidentally (just checked your profile)

[Towelsrus]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your input, invaluable!

Well its going to be a warm weekend on the coast so enjoy the lovely sunshine and birthday!

Regards

Craig

[Dan-Lawrence]

My pleasure, thanks Craig, currently on the Isle Of Wight is lovely !