Is It Better To Refresh Content Or Create New Pages?

This week’s Ask An SEO asks a classic content conundrum:

“Are content refreshes still an effective tactic, or is it better to create new pages altogether?”

Yes, content refreshes are still an effective tactic in cases such as:

• Product releases where you only continue to sell the new product (new colors or sizes and other variants, but the same product).
• Data is released and should be updated for the content to be helpful or accurate.
• New customer or reader questions that are something readers are considering and thinking about.
• New brands enter the space and others close down, making shopping lists non-helpful if there’s nowhere to shop.
• New ways to present the content, such as adding bullet lists or tables, or a new video.

With that said, not every page needs to be refreshed. If there is a similar topic that will help the reader but isn’t directly related to an existing header or sub-header, refreshing the page to include the new content could take your page off-topic. This can make it somewhat irrelevant or less helpful for users, which makes it bad for SEO, too. In this case, you’ll want to create a new page.

Once you have the new page created, look for where it can tie into the page you initially wanted to refresh and add an internal link to the new page. This gives the visitor on the page the opportunity to learn more or find the alternative, and then click back to finish reading or shopping. It also helps search engines and crawlers find their way to the new content.

New pages could be a good solution for:

• Articles and guides where you want to define a topic, strategy, or theory in more detail.
• Ecommerce experience to bring users to a sub-collection or sub-category, or a product alternative for things that are better for specific needs like size, fit, make, or model, etc.
• Lead gen pages where you have a few service options and want the person to find the more relevant funnel for their specific needs.

For example, a recipe site that offers a regular, gluten-free, and vegetarian option doesn’t need to stuff all three recipe versions into the main recipe page. They can use an internal link at the top of the main recipe that says, “Click here for the gluten free version,” which helps the user and lets the search engines know they have this solution, too. Clothing brands can talk about tighter or looser fits and recommend a complementary brand if a customer complains about the same thing for a specific product or brand; this can go on product or category and collection pages.

If a client asks if they should refresh or create a new page, we:

• Recommend refreshing pages when the content begins to slip, does not recover, and we realize that the content is no longer as helpful as it could be. If refreshing the content can keep it on topic and provide a more accurate solution, or a better way for visitors to absorb it.
• Add new pages when the solution a visitor needs is relevant to the page that we thought about refreshing,…