Should I Remove Dates From My Old Posts
-
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?
-
Do any of your or anyone reading have any first hand experience with removing dates?
-
"Evergreen content" is my new favorite term! Wow I love it.
-
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.)
-
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.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Date Display
Hi Mozers, Is there any benefit of having the date that the content was updated displayed at the very top of a content page rather than at the bottom? Would this impact our EAT? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater0 -
I still see the old page in index
Hello, I have done a redirect and still see in google index my old page after 3 weeks. My new page is there also Is it normal that the old page isn't dropped for the index yet ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Changing URL structure of date-structured blog with 301 redirects
Howdy Moz, We've recently bought a new domain and we're looking to change over to it. We're also wanting to change our permalink structure. Right now, it's a WordPress site that uses the post date in the URL. As an example: http://blog.mydomain.com/2015/01/09/my-blog-post/ We'd like to use mod_rewrite to change this using regular expressions, to: http://newdomain.com/blog/my-blog-post/ Would this be an appropriate solution? RedirectMatch 301 /./././(.) /blog/$1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IanOBrien0 -
Spam Links? -115 Domains Sharing the Same IP Address, to Remove or Not Remove Links
Out of 250 domains that link to my site about 115 are from low quality directories that are published by the same company and hosted on the same ip address. Examples of these directories are: -www.keydirectory.net -www.linkwind.com -www.sitepassage.com -www.ubdaily.com -www.linkyard.org A recent site audit from a reputable SEO firm identified 125 toxic links. I assume these are those toxic links. They also identified about another 80 suspicious domains linking to my site. They audit concluded that my site is suffering a partial Penguin penalty due to low quality links. My question is whether it is safe to remove these 125 links from the low quality directories. I am concerned that removing this quantity of links all at once will cause a drop in ranking because the link profile will be thin with only about 125 domains remaining that point to the site. Granted those 125 domains should be of somewhat better quality. I am playing with fire by having these removed. I URGENTLY NEED ADVICE AS THE WEBMASTER HAS INITIATED STEPS TO REMOVE THE 125 LINKS. Thanks everyone!!! Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
I have removed over 2000+ pages but Google still says i have 3000+ pages indexed
Good Afternoon, I run a office equipment website called top4office.co.uk. My predecessor decided that he would make an exact copy of the content on our existing site top4office.com and place it on the top4office.co.uk domain which included over 2k of thin pages. Since coming in i have hired a copywriter who has rewritten all the important content and I have removed over 2k pages of thin pages. I have set up 301's and blocked the thin pages using robots.txt and then used Google's removal tool to remove the pages from the index which was successfully done. But, although they were removed and can now longer be found in Google, when i use site:top4office.co.uk i still have over 3k of indexed pages (Originally i had 3700). Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening and more importantly how i can fix it? Our ranking on this site is woeful in comparison to what it was in 2011. I have a deadline and was wondering how quickly, in your opinion, do you think all these changes will impact my SERPs rankings? Look forward to your responses!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | apogeecorp0 -
Should I remove 404 urls in webmaster tools?
I've recently removed a lot of category pages so should I remove the urls in webmaster tools or let them drop out of the index naturally?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Old and New Google Places Address Update or Create?
Working on SEO for client who is at a new address. Luckily? there are no google reviews attached to the old addresses (there 2). Should I try to update one of the old ones? Or should I just go ahead and create a new listing? What are the pros and cons of each decision.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | greenhornet770