Adding more content to an old site

[seomagnet]

We have a site which was de-moted from PR4 to PR3 with the latest Google update. We have not done any SEO for a long time for the site and the content is the same with over 100 page.

My question is, in order to update the site, which is the best to do it, do we:

1. re-introduced new content to replace old once

2. re-write old content

3. Add new pages

Many thanks in advance.

[Bevelwise]

Of these 3 options you laid out I would recommend adding new pages.  You can always find other content about your company/services/products that is not posted on your website and recycle it to a degree.  Have you guys ever thought about implementing a blog into the website.  As far as a great user friendly way to continue to product content a blog is great.

[seomagnet]

Thanks for that, we are about to introduce a blog into the site, but was a bit unsure of our existing content which for some is by now is out of date...

[RyanPurkey]

You could have been right on the cusp with your original PR4 and lost just enough links to turn the reading back to PR3.  One thing to check would be 404 errors, fixing and redirecting any that you possibly can, and seeing where you're getting links (or links from the past) and creating new pages that would be well received in that segment.

[NFI]

Hi Seomagnet, If you have been demoted there may be black hat criteria on your website, have a good look at your on-site optimization and backlink strength before adding fresh content. If you are determined this is due to old content by all means write some more pages but I would personally start with on-site then off-site then building the website bigger.

[KeriMorgret]

Google's homepage recently went from a toolbar pagerank 10 to a toolbar pagerank 9. What are your other metrics like? Has your organic traffic from Google changed in the six months? Toolbar PR is just one indication of how Google views your site, and is on that is infrequently updated and not totally accurately reported to the user, and is several weeks old by the time it is published.

[seomagnet]

I never really bothered to check any other metric up untill I came to this forum. Our keyword ranking has dropped slightly in the past few months but we don't really depend much on site traffic to generate income as the business already has regular feed of businesses using our services.

[KeriMorgret]

Is your site verified in Google Webmaster Tools, and Bing's Webmaster Tools? If not, get it verified, then look at your account. There's a wealth of information there, including any notices from the search engines about anything they find that might be suspect (Google now even sends a note for buying/selling links), and you can get some better statistics about your site when it's verified.

I would first look in your webmaster tools, and see if the engines have flagged anything for you. If so, then you know what to work on first.

Second, step back and think about what purpose your website has for your business, is it meeting that purpose, and what are useful metrics for you.

In May, Matt Cutts did a video response to a person asking why toolbar PR isn't updated more frequently (available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ9pFUSVG9g) and mentioned that while they internally keep a close eye on correct PR, they're not as worried about what shows up in the toolbar. They have some flags if something with super-high PR goes down to super-low PR in the toolbar, but a move from 4 to 3 doesn't fall under that.

So, it's probably good to be thinking about your site, but think beyond the toolbar PR.