Stay Fresh, Stay Ranked: The Importance of Up-to-Date Content for SEO Success

1. Fresh Content is Seen as More Valuable

New content signals a website owner’s active engagement in their niche, and search engines are smart enough to notice this.

For instance, Google Analytics shows that websites with consistently updated content receive 434% more indexed pages over time. This increase in indexed pages suggests that Google sees these sites as more relevant and valuable in the eyes of the search engine.

2. Search Engines Love Fresh Content

Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yandex prioritize content that’s fresh and relevant. This means they crawl and index content that has been recently published.

Google’s John Mueller stated that “The freshness of the content doesn’t matter as much as the relevance of the content to the user’s query.” But it’s still true that Google favors content that is recently published, as they want to provide users with the most recent information available.

3. Fresh Content Aids in E-A-T

E-A-T, which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, is a critical ranking factor. Google’s Gary Illyes mentioned in a Twitter AMA that “Content freshness is not an E-A-T factor but a useful signal.” However, fresh content can help demonstrate E-A-T by keeping the site updated with relevant, authoritative information.

4. Fresh Content Boosts User Engagement

According to BuzzSumo, websites that consistently update their content receive more backlinks and social shares. This engagement with users can lead to more clicks and higher rankings.

For instance, a website that updated its content weekly in 2019 received 20.7% more clicks per visit compared to the same website that updated only once every few weeks.

5. Fresh Content Makes the Best Use of Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are paths that help users understand how they’ve reached the current page. They’re important for user experience and site navigation. A fresh content update will often make use of breadcrumbs to help users follow the path they’ve taken.

A recent example from a well-known digital marketing blog shows breadcrumbs improving user experience with updated content. When a new post was published on their website, it improved the bounce rate significantly because users were more engaged with the content.

6. Fresh Content Helps with Site Crawlability

Search engines like Google use crawlable content to index websites and understand the structure of a site. Fresh content can make a site easier for search engines to crawl and understand, helping to boost rankings.

A website audit by Ahrefs shows that sites with more crawlable pages have higher rankings. This means that fresh content can help improve site crawlability and rankings.