How Often Should Important Website Pages Be Updated?
Securing a top ranking for a page or post is rarely done overnight. It requires great quality content, and updates to that content over time. Many small businesses wonder how often to update website content for SEO rankings to start to improve.
For an important page or blog post that you want to rank well, review and update it about every three months. For an important page or post, six months should be the longest stretch without making any improvements.
These regular updates does not mean rewriting the whole piece of content every three months. It is simply expanding on the content and asking if anything could be made clearer or more useful.
It has always been said that a good website is never truly done. These updates are that constant work that is needed on the site and for SEO ranking.
Focus Your Updates On The Pages You Want To Rank
Not every page or post needs the same amount of attention. Some pages don’t need a huge ranking focus.
The contact page on your website will not need to be updated often. The focus and effort should be on important service pages, products, locations, and target search terms.
This will likely include pages like:
- Main service pages
- City or location pages
- Key blog posts
- Pages already ranking on page one or two
- Pages tied to services the business is looking to grow
Aim For A Three-Month Review
By doing updates roughly every three months, you’ll be allowing time for Google to notice the changes as they crawl the pages. The Google algorithm will have time to process the changes and determine if a higher ranking is in order.
If you’re updating pages and posts too often, it will be nearly impossible to know which updates really helped that page. Conversely, if the ranking goes lower, it will be impossible to know which update caused that drop.
With a goal of updating content every three months, you’ll allow time for Google to process the updates, and you to make better decisions for future updates.
Six months in between updates is an acceptable time frame for a lower-priority page. Three months is better for a page the business really wants to move up in rankins.
Updating A Page Does Not Mean Rewriting It
These updates to content do not need to be massive. By no means are you looking to rewrite the entire page. Small, simple updates will be plenty to show improvements to the content and Google.
Some of the changes you can focus on are:
- Fix a line that reads just a little awkwardly
- Add a question customers often ask
- Expand a short paragraph
- Add a new section
- Add one or two original photos
- Replace an old image
- Update prices, services, dates, or business details
- Add an internal link to a related page (always great for SEO!)
- Improve a heading
- Add a better call to action
- Explain a term that could confuse readers
One thing we’ve done before is to email a link to the page or post to a client and ask them to read the page and tell us what else they would like to know about that topic. Any parts of the article that were a little confusing? Any words that they didn’t 100% know what it meant? Did they see the link to another page in it? Did they feel the CTA was attention grabbing?
Any input they give can then be used to expand a section, clarify a word or phrasing, and improve readability. You don’t need to add in all their feedback improvement ideas at once. That would be the opposite of what we’re recommending. Save ideas for the next three months round of updates.
Keep Track Of What You Changed
In whatever way works best for you, keep some record of what updates you make to the content. That could be in a word document and the notes section, a spreadsheet, or even just a notebook jotting general ideas of what was done.
These notes and records should cover updates like:
- Page or post name
- Keyword being targeted
- Current ranking
- Date reviewed
- What was changed
- Ranking after the change
- Ideas for the next update
Keeping these notes or records helps to avoid making the same change twice. Most importantly, it allows you to keep track of what helped the most. If updating a section moved the ranking up two spots, but adding new images had no impact, it’s probably wise to update another section instead of focusing on images.
In the same way, if updating a heading causes the ranking to go down, you’ll know what to change it back to.
Keeping track of these updates turns your SEO efforts into an ongoing process, not random edits made every three months.
Use Google Search Console And Semrush To Find Pages To Update
There are a few great tools to use for determining which pages to focus on. Some are free and some have a cost to them.
You can use Google Search Console to determine:
- Which search terms are bringing up a page
- How many impressions the page receives
- Whether people are clicking
- Whether performance is growing or falling
If you spot something like a drop in clicks or impressions for a page, that is likely an indicator that the page needs attention. And then needs attention again in three months.
There is no cost to using Google Search Console. Once your site is set up and connected to it, the reports are all offered free.
Another great tool is Semrush. A SEMrush keyword report can show:
- What terms the page ranks for
- Whether rankings are moving up or down
- Which pages are close to the first page
- Which competitors are moving ahead
You might find that a page is ranking for other keywords than you originally thought. You can then update content to better focus on that keyword. You’ll also see the Keyword Difficulty for each keyword and be able to determine how much content might be needed.
With SEMRush you will see what other websites are ranking for that keyword – giving you even more input and content ideas to bring into the page.
What Happens Once A Page Ranks Really Well?
Once you get a page to rank at the top, the work does not stop. It does change a bit.
Content updates might not happen every three months. Maybe every six months you’ll focus on new content additions. Instead, every few months, look at what other businesses are publishing for the same search term. What content are they using to get better rankings coming up behind you?
If the ranking is top spot and staying there, content updates might only be needed once a year.
Small checks can still happen throughout the year, especially if:
- A competitor starts moving up
- Rankings begin to fall
- The business changes a service
- New customer questions come up
- Information becomes old
The goal is not to make changes just to say the page was updated. Changes should make the page more useful.
Keep Publishing New Content Too
Improving existing pages is by no means a reason to stop publishing new content.
New blogs give the website a great place to answer customer questions. New pages can focus on great targeted keywords. With both you can build links between the related pages.
Any small business should keep publishing great new content while also returning to key existing pages. The two work together.
A new blog can be used to provide further support to an older service page. An updated service page can link back to a new blog article. The more internal links that can be created, the better!
A Good Website Is Never Done
A good website should keep evolving as the business changes. New content needs to be added to answer new customers’ questions. New content is needed to help keep SEO improvements going.
The pages and posts that matter most should not be published and forgotten.Review them. Improve them. Keep notes. Watch the rankings. After three months, review and see what could be made better.
If you’re not sure what an update would look like for one of your pages or blog posts, we can look and give you a couple of ideas free of charge. If you want a keyword report for your site, we’re always happy to provide one anytime.
Knowing how often to update website content for SEO gives you a clear plan to keep improving the pages that matter most, instead of publishing them once and hoping the rankings take care of themselves.