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Is changing content often good from a search perspective? This question is discussed at WebmasterWorld and a lot of good information is dispensed.
First of all, "changing" content should be considered carefully. It could potentially hurt your rankings, according to Tedster:
If a url depends significantly on on-page factors for its ranking on a given search, then changing that content can even undermine those rankings.
It's important to acknowledge that changing content is not a good thing, necessarily. Instead, you should *add* content.
Don't change your page too much. Instead, focus on building other pages.
If you change your page from just "trophy" to grab things like "trophies" and "trofies" (for people who can't spell) you divide all the focus of the page between those different iterations. You are dividing up the amount of emphasis you put on any one of the word sets. Themeing really comes into play. If you are worried about ranking for different variations of a phrase, create additional pages of content / links for those different variations. Sure it's a pain, but it's a solid tactic.
That's some really good advice. The more content, the more loved you are. That's how it typically works.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Jason Forthofer
02/20/2008 06:44 pm
Interesting. I recently was stumped because I had top placement for my keyword. Then I added a descriptive paragraph and the ranking left. Now wondering if I should go back to the older less informative page.
Rob Abdul
02/22/2008 09:23 am
Jason, I'm guessing that your top placement was in MSN?
Bart Gibby
02/22/2008 06:14 pm
Rob, MSN isn't that bad. Not to mention they wouldn't have enough search traffic to actually send searchers for those misspellings in the first place. Unless of course they do take Yahoo! over. :) Jason, links are always going to be better than changes to the actual page content. A good amount of targeted anchor text links will destroy any "mistake" of web page copy or content. Thus you can cover your SEO "mistakes" with links. Works every time I have done it. This is also the only way a full flash website can rank for anything. But its obviously better to do both if you have the time. Cheers, -Bart Gibby
No Name
02/24/2008 02:25 pm
You need to keep a certain amount of keywords in your content, but you should update content frequently.
Jason Forthofer
02/26/2008 08:59 pm
Thanks guys, I'll try that. The keyword terms was actually on google, ranked third. Now I'm on page 8. I'll I did was add a descriptive paragraph.
No Name
04/29/2009 11:23 am
So in this case what about news websites that have some pages changed very often? It seems that most search engines actually like this...