Content freshness and non-news sites

[seoholic]

Although my site is about the presentation of collected year old quality data (like polls or economic data), I have do deal with content freshness and have a few questions. Google is showing news results (Universal Search) and regular newspaper results in some of my most important SERPs.

I personally believe, that news are irrelevant to my niche and my stats tell me the same but I have do deal with Googles needs.

Which concepts of frehness importance exist?
I suppose that there is a sitewide and a pagewide concept of freshness. I have to deal with suspicious (SEO) archive site of newspapers and I suppose that my only option is to have an important news related page on my site because my site is mainly not about news.

What are your experiences with Googles ability to distinct between seasonal trends and hot news topics?
My businnes is a seasonal business and google seems to suppose again and again that topic relevance delta e.g. the beginning of the season makes news more relevant.

How do you deal with Googles deserve for freshness and news on sites which use year old content to rank?
I aggregate RSS news on my homepage and show the newest 10 entries with links to the archive -thats 20% of my homepage links and linkjuice and seems to be kind of expensive in a SEO perspective. It makes my site unique in comparison to other established sites and is kind of defense mechanism against Googles hunger for fresh content.

[tedster]

Just because Google includes a News onebox on some of your SERPs doesn't mean you need to force it for your site, at least not as I see it. That would probably take developing a full blown news section of your own, complete with reporters and editors, to make a real difference. From what you say, that doesn't match your site's theme very well.

You might consider blogging from time to time and integrate your most recent articles (title and teaser) with your home page. When you say "I have do deal with content freshness", does that mean your traffic is inadequate in some way?

[seoholic]

The news are topic related, but news aren't very important for people. Only Google seems to artificially push newspapers and their newsbox for testing purposes or problems with recognising the difference between seasonal trends and hot topics.

In my niche are huge authority sites, 10+ years old, 10k+ referring domains, 100k+ pages...
Social approaches do not work, mostly calculators, guides, tables and other boring informational stuff.

When newspapers outrank this sites although they don't get intense social signals for their boring articles or are an authority in my niche. My biggest competitors even have more backlinks than most of the newspapers in my country.

So there is only content freshness left as an explanation. I see it as an isolated metric I have to improve.

I try to cover all the methods and topics for risk balancing and to cover my many different competitors methods and topics. That's how "I have do deal with content freshness".

Regarding your advise to write blogposts and my first question (freshness concepts):
Why would writing own blogposts help? I think that the amount of new posts per day is the important factor. All the news on my homepage are replaced serveral times a day by newer ones and I try to increase the exchange rate by adding more sources.

[tedster]

I was thinking that your site is about annual stats - a once a year thing - and a blog would give you away to get publish content more often.

I'm still not sure that freshness is that intense a factor for most topics. Are these newspapers that are ranking so well ranking as a regular organic result, or part of a Google News onebox?

[seoholic]

Stats for 2 events a year are collected and published during the whole year, hundreds of institutions have to feed my site with their part of the stats.

The amount of news is no problem for me:
[webmasterworld.com...]
"integrate your most recent articles (title and teaser) with your home page" that is what I actually do with the feed items: title, teaser, link to full rss article view with a link to full article/source.

The newspapers are well ranking as a regular organic result and part of a Google News onebox. For one of my most competitive SERPs News oneboxes seem to be assigned to page 1 but are nearly always at the bottom, maybe because of ctr. Positions 1-3 never change, 4-10 a few times a day. Some sites can get to position 4 but also to page 2 or even further. Another newspaper (archive/topic)page is on page 4 and will soon be back in top positions. Google thinks its content was changed 2 days ago (date integrated in SERPs), but the last article is 4 month old.

Newspaper organic results disappear and reappear in SERPs. The actual organic newspaper result is 1 year old, topic related and on position 4 (4 is the new 1). The onebox article is 2 days old and the keyword is mentioned once. The onebox article is not relevant.

So the Google News onebox content shows irrelevant content, because there is no better fresh news content. But instead of disappearing the Google news onebox stays until the article is expired (3 days?) and no new article is found. I suppose, that the Google news onebox shows only new content and its position is influenced by ctr.

Theory
I suppose that the newspaper sites have some kind of sitewide freshness authority which makes old articles be threated similar to new articles.
The Google news onebox seems to need real fresh news content and takes everything it can get containing the keyword. Its existance indicates a need for fresh content.
My theory is that there is also page freshness authority (I try to increase on my homepage) but I have no statistical data to prove that.