Search Engine Optimization Strategy #5 The Nonsense re: Fresh Content
Visit any search engine optimization site or forum, and you will find several mentions of keeping content fresh for higher search engine ranking. I know that there are far bigger gods of search engine optimization, but I must pronounce that this seems like nonsense to me.
Think about it, why would search engines rank pages higher because they are frequently updated? What about those pages makes them more relevant to searchers?
If you are an expert in search engine optimization and claim that fresher content causes the search engine spiders to visit more frequently, I can buy that. Search engines do not want to be obsolete, so they visit frequently to get the latest info.
But fresh content as a search engine optimization strategy seems weird to me. What make all this crazy is the Advent of search engine optimization tools that automatically update every page a little bit; change the date etc; so as to fool search engines that they have fresh content.
As has repeatedly been proven if you go out to fool search engines, you usually end up fooling yourself.
So, I guess the search engine optimization strategy for today is: Don't try to fool search engines.
