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In order to keep Google looking at your pages regularly it seems that you need two things: Decent PR and fresh content.
I read comments from some people about changing existing content for no other reason than to make Google think it's fresh, topical stuff. (Someone even suggested having two versions of your home page and alternating between them).
My questions: (1) Does this work? and (2) How much do you need to change in order for this to work?
E.g. Would changing your opening line from "If you want to buy widgets, then WidgetWorld is the place for you" to "If Widgets is what you want, then you've found the right place in WidgetWorld", and leaving everything else on the page the same, be enough to make Google think "Fresh content; better check back here for developments soon"?
Thanks,
Pedent.
I am currently developing 2 sites which will have rotating content on the pages. One has some content that will change automatically each month, and the other will rotate promotional wording for deeper pages (informative articles) each week.
I wasn't worried about search engines when I started working on these sites. I have one site that hasn't had a visit in almost a month and it is still holding a strong position in every keyword.
I'm not convenced that frequent visits by robots really means better rankings. I am interested though to see what anyone else has seen if they don't mind sharing.
Some would take that as a tongue-in-cheek comment/question as there is a school of thought that believes PR doesn't matter very much. I personally wouldn't mind a PR of 10 :-)
And welcome to webmasterworld tacoX.
On the fresh content issue - I would be interested in knowing how much of a change is required. You obviously don't want to mess with a title, desc, heading, content and kw density combination that works. What about if you have a "site last updated on xxx" and just keep updating the date?
I'm not convenced that frequent visits by robots really means better rankings. I am interested though to see what anyone else has seen if they don't mind sharing
Spot on. An irrelevant site will always be irrelevant, regardless of the number of times it is spidered ;)
Frequent robot visits do give you better opportunities to experiment though ...
Why not do something related to the weather or something that has a date or other info in it that you manually change each morning. The bot will see that the page has changes - that's all that is necessary.
Works for us.
I'm close-to-convinced that fresh does not help rankings, see: Fresh tag - what is it good for? [webmasterworld.com]
>> (1) Does this work?
Yes, changing content makes the bot increase spidering frequency. It's economics - if sites don't change often, don't spider often. Another way to get new content indexed seems to be using Googles "Site Search" box [webmasterworld.com]
>> (2) How much do you need to change in order for this to work?
Not a lot: Dynamic content and the fresh listing [webmasterworld.com]
>> I am interested though to see what anyone else has seen if they don't mind sharing.
As stated above: Spidering does not equal ranking. So the only reason why you would do it is to get new content indexed. If there's no new content, a fresh tag seems to do nothing for you.
The best way to use this fact, imho, would be to feature (links to) your new content on the front page or a dedicated "what's new" page.
/claus
It makes sense to do this for new sites - if they're excellent sites it gives them a short period in the limelight to pick up interest and incoming links if deserved.
But it doesn't look like this boosting of fresh sites can be achieved by simply tinkering with established pages - they really need to be 'fresh.'
By the way, if I want GoogleBot to crawl new content on my site, I tinker slightly with the sites that link to it.
On the fresh content issue - I would be interested in knowing how much of a change is required. You obviously don't want to mess with a title, desc, heading, content and kw density combination that works. What about if you have a "site last updated on xxx" and just keep updating the date?
i experimented for 2 months .. google cameby daily and i used to get freshbot results everyday. from that i learnt how and what google needs to be bring me on top for my keywords and have settled now :)
I have a PR6 page that changes at least every 2 days (sometimes daily) and as of now the cache is over 30 days old.
Title and description tag may or may not change but near the top of the page is date that would always change (hard coded so source changes) and the remainder of page has additions and deletions.
