That’s right. Stop doing it!
“But it’s the same product, and it was from forever ago,” you say. Nope, just don’t do it.
Remember our post about On-Page SEO? Well, in that post we mentioned how having long, factual, and relevant content is one of the best ways to help boost your SEO. Boosting on-page SEO leads to better SERP rankings, which can help increase your customer base. Along with relevant content, another important factor to consider when developing your content is its uniqueness.
The Content Analysis
Content that seems to be fresh, relevant, and – most importantly – unique makes Google value your site more than other sites that have old and replicated content. If your site has replicated content, Google deems your site unoriginal and less likely to be helpful to Googlers.
In the 2011 release of Google’s “Freshness” update, Google recreated the way that websites were ranked. Although Google shocked everyone in 2011 into scrambling about for fresh, easy-to-update content, SEO experts have since found a variety of different ways to add new content to sites. Utilizing these content building techniques, you too can have a fresh, relevant site that Google will swoon over.
The Freshness Factor
So what does it mean to have a fresh page? There are several different indicators that determine the “freshness” level of a website. The first, of course, is the inception date, which is when Google recognizes the page or document. After that, Google and other SEO bots crawl your website looking for updated content and links that prove your website is still relevant and helpful to current searches.
Having a website with constantly changing content is the next best way to keep your site fresh and on Google’s “good” list. Changing an ad or moving a few comments around is not the change we are talking about here. Good change is when the main body text or site layout changes and NEW information is made available.
Notice how we said NEW? That’s right. NEW content is the way to change your site because it makes the biggest impact to your content. In order to get new content, you don’t need to constantly re-write the same page; instead, you can create new pages at a higher rate than you can update older content.
So Stop Copy-and-Pasting!
Here’s the good stuff: creating new pages isn’t as hard as you think. Blogs offer an easy, fun way to reach out to your customers and attract potential Google searches. Blog posts are also great for targeting new keywords, expanding the target market, attracting new search queries, and keep your page fresh and up to date.
This is why copy-and-pasting content from other pages on your website or – in the rare case that you sell similar products as other companies – having similar content to other websites is very bad for SEO. If Google can find the same information on other sites that rank higher, the information on your site becomes redundant and obsolete.