Should I Remove Dates From My Old Posts

[alpha17]

I have a web site that has content about home improvement topics but the site has no new content since 2010.  All the posts on the wordpress site have the date which are all 2010 and prior.  Is there a downside in terms of search engine rankings to remove the dates or changing the dates?  What are the risks to removing the dates?  Could I lose rankings if I do this?  Do you have any personal experience with this situation?

[jesse-landry]

What you should do is create some new content!

The dates aren't going to affect your SERPs at all. Google could care less. Where it looks bad is to the user. Forget about the search engine. People worry too much about how a robot will respond to their site when they should be worried about how a potential or current customer will respond to their site.

Focus on that aspect and the rest will trickle down from their. Google is trying to replicate human searching tendencies while attempting to clean the web up *(cause humans hate spam.) This is why the robot thing works. Get it? Robots imitate humans too! So what I'm saying is: FOCUS ON THE HUMAN!

If I arrive to your site and see the last time you posted new content was 3 years ago I'm going to be thinking "wow these guys are lazy, don't care, or just generally aren't on top of progressing in their field." So yeah. The dates will make a difference. But it might not trick people. It might still be obvious that your content is 3 years old.

The only way to truly solve this is by creating NEW CONTENT that kicks butt!

So there you go.

[Christy-Correll]

I agree with Jesse that you should create great new content with your users top of mind. I also like the idea of periodically updating evergreen content with a new post date. As far, as hurting your rankings, I think that simply removing the date from your post (or updating it without actually updating the content) could hurt your rankings in the longterm by damaging your credibility with your readers. If you incorporate your date into your URL structure (and/or index date-based archive pages), you need to consider preventing duplicate content issues by correctly implementing 301-redirects. The same goes for if you remove the dates from the articles (which is something I personally feel is bad for usability and do not recommend.)

[jesse-landry]

"Evergreen content" is my new favorite term! Wow I love it.

[alpha17]

Do any of your or anyone reading have any first hand experience with removing dates?