Google has expressed in the past that frequently updated pages get a boost in rankings (QDF / Query That Deserves Freshness), that seems to favor blogs and news sites over company sites, which have less reason to be updated often. How important of a signal is “freshness”?
Matt Cutts describes the pitfall of creating “fresh” unique content for a site that doesn’t call for QDF content. Rather work hard on your “evergreen” steady content that stands the test of time. For most small business websites, the “freshness” signal doesn’t necessarily affect the ranking of your site because for most of us, the content on our sites about who we are and what we do that was good yesterday is still relevant and “good” today. If we aren’t in news/events/tech updates, we probably don’t have Queries that Deserve Freshness very often.
Andrei Broder wrote quite a while ago describing the types of queries people make.
In the web context the “need behind the query” is often not informational in nature. We classify web
queries according to their intent into 3 classes:
1. Navigational. The immediate intent is to reach a particular site, i.e. brand searches like Best Buy
2. Informational. The intent is to acquire some information assumed to be present on one or
more web pages, i.e. how to fix a broken toilet or set my default printer in Chrome
3. Transactional. The intent is to perform some web-mediated activity, i.e. shopping or looking for products
If we can think of our website in terms of where we fall in the type of search being performed to find us and what we do, then we will be better equipped to answer the question of how often and how important is the “freshness” signal for my content. Just because we update the content of our website by adding new content, or changing the wording of our content doesn’t mean we should be ranking out higher.
Check out Matt’s Video here:
8055 E Tufts Ave Ste 240
