How fresh is the article which you post?
Do you know that Google measures your entire documents for freshness and ranks each page in accordance with the search query type? Surprised? It is actually true! Know the ways through which Google determines the freshness of your content. It will help you in creating fresh content and enhance your site’s SEO ranking.
Freshness by Starting Date
At the beginning, a web page may be given freshness score on the basis of its inception date. This freshness score may at the start increase the ranking of the content for some relevant queries, but degradation occurs when the content becomes older. The start date is when Google first discovers a link to the content or becomes aware about the document.
Changes which occur
Always remember that the amount of changes which you do in your web pages also influence its freshness. If you regularly update your contents, it can ensure a good rank. For instance, change the text body of the web page contents frequently and it can significantly influence its rankings. Small changes are ignored, but major changes are always noticed by Google.
Changes in Core Content
Core content changes means changes made to the main text body. Google may ignore changes made to the comments, date/time tags, advertisements or JavaScript. To mark freshness, make changes to the main body text and you are sure to get the changes noticed by Google.
Frequency of Document Change
If you change the core content more often, say in every two to three months, it will score better than the contents which you change in every year or every two years.
Creating New Page
Instead of making revisions to the existing pages, you can add completely fresh pages over time. It will help you earn a higher freshness score and can rank better than the sites who add fresh contents less frequently.
Links from Fresh Sites
If your sites have links from high freshness score websites, it can in turn increase the freshness score of your website as well.
Frequency of New Link Growths
Always remember that not all freshness scores are limited to just the pages. External signals can also denote freshness with strong positive impacts. If your webpage marks an increase in its link growth rate, it can be an indication of relevance to the search engines.
Changes in Anchor Text
If you change the subject of web page dramatically over time, the new anchor text pointing to the page will also change. Here, Google will ascertain that your site has changed significantly and the old anchor text is stale, thereby devaluation of the older link will occur.
Engagement Metrics and Traffic
When the Google presents the search results to users, if the users choose your website over competitive sites and spend significant time exploring your site, it can indicate relevance and freshness of your site.
Apart from the aforementioned suggestions, always remember that you should not simply update your website to get better freshness score. It will often lead to the opposite and you will become frustrated. Instead keep your focus on adding fresh and better contents to benefit your readers and customers.