Just how important is fresh content in terms of rankings?

[Liam Hamer]

One of my sites that I have been heavily backlinking and such in an effort to move up the rankings, didn't have a fresh post(it's a WP site) since the end of August. I decided it was time to put fresh content on there regularly, so today I added a new post. I made sure to link to another page from this post, and also link back to the homepage. Within minutes, the site jumped 11 places in Google This is quite a tough niche to crack in terms of SEO(the first few in the top 10 are pretty strong) but it now sits at 53. Just a few weeks ago, it was back at 400+ so I've made progress. The site is only a little over 2 months old too, so I'm hoping we're getting to that stage where google trusts us.

My question is basically the thread title - just how important is fresh content? I plan on adding new posts/pages every couple of days from now on. I'm also going to continue backlinking etc. Could the site rocket up with regular, fresh content? I want to be in that top 10 so bad Also - is the 11 place jump just temporary? i.e similar to how a new EZA article can occupy a high spot in the SERPS then a few days/weeks later move down to it's 'true' position.

[blueice]

It probably has some effect, every post does add PR to a site but we are talking little bits here. It would depend on what you are ranking for the weaker the competition the more effect a post has.

For quite a few long tails searches the serps have given me some defunct sites that havnt seen a webmaster for years. More common is active sites but old pages, I did a search on the topical "newsnight" and a few dates from years ago showed up.

I don`t really have an answer to your question :-)

[Liam Hamer]

Thanks for your reply - I guess there aren't any definitive answers About the PR thing - my site is still PR0. Is there a set time period when it can go up? Like, will it stay a 0 until I've earned Google's trust?

[HomeComputerGames]

I believe Google does it's PR updates quarterly.
I'm not sure when the next update is due but I'm sure one of the PR followers will know.

Fresh content means your site is growing. That is a big factor with Google imho.
This especially holds true for newer sites.
At 2 months you are going to see a lot of jumping around. So do not get discouraged when everything vanishes for a couple of days. It happens to everyone.
As your site ages and more backlinks are built the site will become more stable.
Of course as of late Google seems to be breaking all of it's old confusion and blasting us with some new headaches. The fun just never ends

[bgmacaw]

New content gets a temporary "Query Deserves Freshness" or QDF bonus. This bonus fades rather quickly though.

Fresh content doesn't matter too much for long terms rankings. What matters is the stability and authority of your incoming links.

[Al Jones]

I use caffeinated content for a lot of my blogs with markoved default to make the content unique. But it makes it more or less unreadable. So I just included these posts in categories only and not the main pages.

[blueice]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

New content gets a temporary "Query Deserves Freshness" or QDF bonus. This bonus fades rather quickly though.

Fresh content doesn't matter too much for long terms rankings. What matters is the stability and authority of your incoming links.

The QDF probably will not apply if we are trying to get PAGE-X ranked, That will just apply to the new pages. Does QDF filter through a site? Thats something else to puzzle over.

I tend to agree with the linking part. Could we then safely say "Fresh quality links are more important than Fresh quality content" to maintain serps ranking. I think we can say it, but not safely :-)

[searchnology]

I've had roughly the same content on my sales page for 5 years and still rank on the first page of Google for 10 keywords....so I would say no.

I do have an autoblogger to add pages and content for indexing but those pages don't rank.

[dolee259]

Fresh content is very effective for search engine optimization. as you add unique content google may be crawl your page first and quality of the content will increase page rank so much content = much traffic

[7_8_shortcuts]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

Fresh content doesn't matter too much for long terms rankings. What matters is the stability and authority of your incoming links.

I would agree here, but...

It depends a little on what you want to achieve with your site... If you want to build an authority site in your niche, then fresh regular content is pretty much "expected" of you.

On the other hand I also agree that backlinks and the way they are done plays perhaps a more important role than the number of pages of your site.

Many factors

ps. and yes in the first months expect quite a lot of dancing-around in Google :-)

[Liam Hamer]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

New content gets a temporary "Query Deserves Freshness" or QDF bonus. This bonus fades rather quickly though.

Fresh content doesn't matter too much for long terms rankings. What matters is the stability and authority of your incoming links.

My current QDF bonus just ran out then, my site has gone back to where it was again - it was 11 positions or so higher for a matter of hours Oh well, I'm still going to make sure to add fresh content regularly and keep building backlinks