Page Updates Benefit AdSense and Search Rankings

Frequent page updates often lead to better numbers for both contextual advertising and search engine optimization.

The concept of updating a page may cover just about any element in an article or document including:

• Document title
• Meta description
• Article headline
• Article copy
• Image file names
• Image captions

Many pages on a website should undergo a refreshing because the content literally may become stale and outdated.

Even if the content on a page isn’t outdated, a page often has many opportunities for improvement in any if not most of the elements listed above. The changes can range from a simple rewrite of a few paragraphs to new content or a revised headline.

Experience shows that changes and improvements to a page will often result in a brief boost to results for search rankings and contextual advertising such as AdSense. There is no guarantee that a temporary increase will take place. But many experiments show updates can increase AdSense revenue.

Even better, some updates result in a permanent improvement in search rankings and advertising revenue.

Page Update Tactics

Search engines of course seem to reward entirely new pages of original content more than they do updated pages of previously published content.

So refreshening should not replace the production of new content.

Not surprisingly, adding a paragraph to a single article is likely to get the smallest benefit. The greater the changes, the greater the chances of getting rewarded for it. Improving keywords is especially important.

The subject of the page seems to matter in how much search engines respond. High-value content gets a better response than low-value content.

Search engines appear to signal their desire for websites to develop specific types of content that THEY and their visitors value. But website publishers should consider such a signal carefully. Chasing after content that only search engines value may result in distortions with the site’s own brand, content and audience.

Frequent page updates also matter

Frequency has an impact on the results, too. Updating pages multiple days of a week creates momentum with search engines. In fact, the ideal frequency is at least daily if not multiple times every day. But that level of commitment should apply only to the most important pages.

Page updates have another advantage. They don’t have to take nearly as much time as a new and original article. Five minutes of effort is better than no update at all.

All of this means that a site publisher who uses a page refresh strategy should update at least one page every day, even if the update is small.

FYI, make sure the publication date on the page changes to reflect the date of the changes and not the original publication date. It will appear as a new article on RSS feeds.