Major homepage update advice?

[followgreg]

Hi there,

I am looking for comments and advice for a website on which I am planning a major content update.
Current content is outdated, it was written over 4 years ago.
New content talks about the same thing but up to date, so not even a single sentence should be the same but they will all include the same keywords.

Problem is: the site is performing very well on a few extremely competitive keywords, all directed towards the homepage.
I know that I should not repair what's not broken but the content really is not what it should be anymore.

QUESTIONS: should I update the content progressively? Since the homepage was NEVER updated since the launch, should I expect a bad reaction from Google?

[new_seo]

Hi,
Google always like fresh and quality contents, so it's great that you are updating your content. But as you said that your site is performing very well in few competitive keywords. Now I have one question?
Those keywords are there in your current content? Because sometimes a site can get listing for a keyword although that is not mentioned for a single time in the site, that is happening through back links. Check whether the same thing is happening wit your site or not.

If yes, then not to worry. Go ahead and change your content, as you want.
But if not, then my suggestion is try to maintain the same density of those keywords in the new content.

BTW, this is my first post and if any one here finds any thing wrong in this plz help me to correct those things.
Hope to learn a lot from here.
Regards
new_seo

[followgreg]

Welcome and thanks new_seo, there is nothing wrong with what you said as anyway everyone guesses, noone knows for sure.

I was referring to what Tedster recently mentioned which is the "type" of site related to freshness of content.

The site I was talking about would be in the corporate category, which means that content does not need that frequent updates.

So being that 'classified' I was wondering if I should ever change the content...then all at once or little by little?

[new_seo]

I personally feel, that little by little would be great. One question to you, what is the back link status of your site?

[tedster]

While there's never a guarantee with Google, makling your first content change in five years is not, in itself, likely to be a problem. If you need to update the language for your visitor's sake, then do it. Keep your new langauge natural, and make sure that important keywords are still in both the copy and in other on-page factors where those keywords appeared previously. I'd say new_seo had some good ideas.

[followgreg]

thanks guys.
I will try to keep keywords close to where they have been, might be difficult if I want to make it flow for human beings (which are the target).
Hopefully google will understand somehow that this is content change for visitors and that the site is still relevant, oh well will see...