Hi, I was wondering if you lose ranking if you don't keep updating your old pages. I know you have to keep adding fresh content, so I would write new articles. But, how about the articles that you already wrote on your website? There is really nothing more that I can add to it. Should I change the "page change frequency" option to never update, instead of monthly updating? Thanks
Google and other search engines understand that a page doesn't necessarily have to update to remain relevant. There are very old pages that still get good rankings. It would be unreasonable for them to take away rankings when a page isn't updated. Freshness of content is mainly good for keeping the Google spider coming back to your website regularly. It also helps you build traffic by always expanding to cover more keywords. I don't know if fresh content actually gives you a rankings boost. I would think things like quality of backlinks would trump factors like freshness. I don't think it would make a difference if you change the page change frequency. That just tells the Google spider how often it should come back.
Not updating your old posts should not affect your rankings. My posts are set for monthly in the sitemap and it works fine for me. Cannot see it being a problem. So I would suggest not to worry about that and just focus on writing new content and building inbound links.
Agree with vansterdam.. it is not always necessary to change or update your content, but it will be better to provide latest and updated information to your visitors and search engine to get better search engine rankings. old content will not negatively affect your search engine rankings but fresh content may positively affect your search engine rankings.
One thing, the more changes to your site, the shorter your indexing span will become. This will help you with other SEO concepts. I recommend the use of Webmaster Tools and XML sitemap submission. But Vansterdam is correct.
I have well over 150 content-rich inner pages that never change. They have remained constant (or increasing) in their search engine rankings. I have a few main pages that have minor changes frequently, and I add fresh, new, content-rich inner pages fairly often. But back to the OP's question — most of those already-published inner pages never change (they have no reason to), and a large number of them continue to score well in the SERPs.
- Jim thanks for the example! And thanks to everyone that replied. - Gunawan I think it's a good idea to have both the general sitemap and the sitemap.xml. If I am correct, the general sitemap is for your visitors to your website. It will be displayed somewhere in your navigation bar and the other sitemap.xml is just for Google. Visitors can't see it.