How much content is it safe to change?
-
I have read that it is unsafe to change more than 20% of your site’s content in any update.
The rationale is that "Changing too much at once can flag your site within the Google algorithm as having something suspicious going on."
Is this true, has anyone had any direct experiences of this or similar?
-
I would have absolutely no concerns over changing your content, as long as you are confident you are changing it for the better.
-
I definitely don't think there's any truth to your site possibly being penalized merely for changing a certain percentage of the site.
However:
- In general, it's always good to change your site in slow increments wherever possible.
- This allows search engine's to slowly adjust to your changes in url structure, content, or site design. Your site wouldn't be "penalized" for it, but considering search engine's have to recrawl your site and adjust to your changes, making sure you don't shock the system by making too many changes is certainly never a bad idea.
-
Sorry should have been clearer its when the text changes as part of a redesign.
Still its seems odd to me.
-
Haven't heard anything like that before. There are plenty of sites who change more than 20% of a page's content often (news sites, forums, search pages) and aren't penalized.
The only thing you should worry about is if you change more than 20% of the content, Google would recrawl and analyze the text and adjust it's relevance for keyword searches accordingly. So maybe you are getting a lot of traffic from a certain paragraph that you remove when you update the page, your rankings will drop from losing that keyword on the page.
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
-
Does changing text content on a site affects seo?
HI, i have changed some h1 and h2 , changed and added paragraphs,fixed plagiarism,grammar and added some pics with alt text, I have just done it today, I am ranking on second page QUESTION-1 is it gonna affect my 2 months SEO efforts? QUESTION -2 Do I have to submit sitemap to google again? QUESTION-3 does changing content on the site frequently hurts SEO?
Algorithm Updates | | Sam09schulz0 -
Have you ever changed the logo anchor text from "logo" to "keyword"? How Google considers?
Hi all, We know that generally logo with the website homepage link is the first link crawled by Google and other search engines. Can we change the anchor text from "logo" to "keyword"? Have any one tried or seen others doing? How Google considers it? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Google & Tabbed Content
Hi I wondered if anyone had a case study or more info on how Google treats content under tabs? We have an ecommerce site & I know it is common to put product content under tabs, but will Google ignore this? Becky
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey1 -
Help Me Change My Client's Mind
My client wants to build a second site to provide targeted links for SEO to his main site. He's interested in buying a TLD with some near topic authority/links and then build the second site's authority up from there. He is clear that this could get him in trouble for a link scheme, but thinks it can all be hidden from Google. Off the top of my head I was able to recall a few of the pain-in-the-neck things you'd have to do to not get caught, but he seemed unconvinced. I recall you'd have to have: Different registrar Different contact/WhoIs Different site host Different G/A, GWT Logging into second's site's G/A, GWT with different IP address not used for main domain With the exception of the last one, he didn't seem to think it would be too hard. Aren't there more difficult maneuvers required for hiding this from Google? I want to be able to point out to him how ridiculous this low integrity effort will be, without losing the client. Thanks! Best... Darcy
Algorithm Updates | | 945010 -
How much does a keyword focused domain matter today?
Is it still better to choose a keyword focused domain lets say over a branded domain in today's world? How much of a part does that have in the grand scheme of things?
Algorithm Updates | | HiddenPeak0 -
Webmaster Guidelines Change History
Does any one have the dates of changes to Googles Webmaster Guidelines?
Algorithm Updates | | MiroAsh0 -
Are all duplicate contents bad?
We were badly hit by Panda back in January 2012. Unfortunately, it is only now that we are trying to recover back. CASE 1:
Algorithm Updates | | Gautam.Jain
We develop software products. We send out 500-1000 word description about the product to various download sites so that they can add to their product listing. So there are several hundred download sites with same content. How does Google view this? Did Google penalize us due to this reason? CASE 2: In the above case the product description does not match with any content on our website. However, there are several software download sites that copy and paste the content from our website as the product description. So in this case, the duplicate content match with our website. How does Google view this? Did Google penalize us due to this reason? Along with all the download sites, there are also software piracy & crack sites that have the duplicate content. So, should I remove duplicate content only from the software piracy & crack sites or also from genuine download sites? Does Google reject all kind of duplicate content? Or it depends on who hosts the duplicate content? Confused 😞 Please help.0 -
Lesser visited, but highly ranked landing paged dropped in rank on Google. Time for a content update?
I noticed that my page one ranked landing pages that don't get a lot of love from me have dropped in rank big time on Google this week. This is a site that has static (meaning, I can't freshen up the content easily) landing pages for products that we sell. The pages that dropped are the ones that have the fewest inbound links, and don't get much attention on the social media side. Our most important landing pages have also dropped, but just a few spots on page one. This is a first for me. Does anyone think that this is a "lack of freshness" penalty? We are still number one on page one for our brand search terms. Would fresh content give me a shot at getting the pages back up? I'm willing to update them slowly, but before I go crazy, I'm reaching out to the pros here.
Algorithm Updates | | Ticket_King0