Freshness with minimal changes

[guggi2000]

We have a section on our site that is doing quite well. Pretty steady for 5-7 years. We change little things every year, mostly design related ...

We are considering adding about 5% of unique content to each page which would partially include relevant keywords. The content would be short sentences from our "feedback engine", which is not published yet. Each sentence is unique and we will edit it in case it has typos. It gives added value to our visitors.

Do you think that would count for "Freshness" and give a slight boost or is it a waste of time to think in terms of SEO? Or is it even risky because it looks like keyword stuffing, although it is not?

[not2easy]

If you have concerns about it being seen as keyword stuffing you could wrap it with <aside> tags (assuming html5) and title it with an appropriate<h# tag as client feedback which sounds like an accurate description, from your post. It would be seen by visitors as fresh new content, and helpful information and bots would see it as related content but not primary.

[guggi2000]

And regarding Freshness?

[martinibuster]

Freshness for SEO is a misunderstanding made by people who deal in speculation and have a shallow idea of how search engines work. The myth originated in a misinterpretation of several blog posts issued by Google.

These shallow ideas are promoted with fake studies but never justified with a link to any patent or research showing that relevance is improved by promoting "fresh" content.

[keyplyr]

I think all attempts at gaming Google into any perceived notions about "fresh" content is at best a waste of time.

[guggi2000]

@keyplyr it's not about gaming Google at all. It has definitely added value to users. But this project costs money and without a traffic gain the ROI would spread over years.

[jimbeetle]

It has definitely added value to users.

Then that's the only reason you need. Go for it.

[iamlost]

What jimbeetle said.

I would add that one should always test ideas before doing a full rollout. In your described situation I'd pick a dozen pages split between high, medium, low traffic pages: benchmark and then update as desired. See what happens and retest or expand rollout as appropriate.

[guggi2000]

@iamlost Thanks a lot. I guess you're right. A classical A/B Test is cheaper and faster than a full roll out.

[WhiteHatTryHard]

Updating articles is worth it in my experience, but you need to add content and quality.

Minimal changes wont do anything for you, unless you optimize the title and meta description.

also 'freshness' really is not a factor in most SERPs.

[Nutterum]

Freshness does not improve rankings. Freshness ups your sessions and new users, so long as you can engage them further on. But that has nothing to do with SEO per say and a lot more to do with user experience and quality content. In the long run well made fresh content can populate and rank for other niches or increase the number of people googling your brand search queries. Maybe there is a minuscule chance that one of your fresh pieces is really fresh and gets cited around attracting backlinks, but then we enter the viral content SEO link-building, which is an entirely different ballgame.