Article Publish Dates for SEO

[ceeze]

Hi Everyone,

Hope it's ok to ask this on here but I know that crawlers favor fresh content - whether it's a newly published page or an existing page that's been updated with new info.

My client believes it would be beneficial to change the published dates on wordpress whenever we update a page. So, in the example below, changing it to today's date if we were to update this page.

However, I know that the page's code will show the last modified date so I'm wondering if it's necessary to edit the published date and if that actually offers any benefit or if the crawler ignores that and will just look at the last modified date in the code.

Thank you in advance!

 

[ElizabethRule]

However, I know that the page's code will show the last modified date so I'm wondering if it's necessary to edit the published date and if that actually offers any benefit or if the crawler ignores that and will just look at the last modified date in the code.

In my experience, updating the published date only has an impact if it’s a post, not a page. There seems to be a negative ranking impact when a post has an old date, which is not a factor for pages. In any case, I think you need to update the published date in the CMS and not rely on the last modified date in the code.

 

[ceeze]

Interesting, thank you for sharing your experience! We currently have the posts set up to where they show the last updated date at the top of the post, but I know the published date on the CMS remains the same unless it's manually updated.

 

[ElizabethRule]

I would also update the publish date in the CMS whenever you make an edit. Helps Google know it's revised, fresh content.

 

[Conor Treacy]

Our experience has been that if it's an older post that has been significantly updated, then keeping the old publish date and then the new modified date shows an intent of freshness. Google does look at both published and modified dates. I don't believe they actually look at what data changed (that processing power would be insane)

If you're changing the publish date with minor edits, and it's being done to appear fresh (like changing the year on an article) then those don't have much (if any) impact. If it's a complete rewrite, then kill the old article, publish as new and create a redirect so you don't lose old links etc.

The one thing that we often run into is older articles, slightly tweaked, but we want them to bubble up to the top of the list on our blog list. Modified date works great in those situations.

 

[fisicx]

If revising the content with significant updates then changing the date can help. But so can putting the date in the content next to the updated content can also work.

Another technique that can work is leaving the old content in place but then create a whole new page with the updates. You link from old to new.

And I'm not so sure the fresh content concept is always true. I've got pages over 10 years old that still rank well and generate traffic.