Is it okay to edit a page (SEO concerns)

[livemusic]

What if I have a site where the page is a bit outdated with its info, is it okay to change some text or add some text? Or does this affect SEO?

[Heavenstorm]

I have edited my page before but only 2 sentences and it did not affect my ranking at all. Not sure if more editing will affect the ranking.

[yukon]

Do Not edit the URL or the Page Title, If you do you'll have to re-rank in the SERPs or at best it will bounce in the SERPs.

A sentence or two is no big deal.

[rahmanpaidar]

See the page below:

Google Ranking Secrets: How Page Changes Affect Rankings On Google

[MrBusiness]

Try not to change/edit/add more than a sentence or two, or it could have real negative effects on your site ranking.

[markowe]

I think as long as you are not making huge changes and your content is still on the topic in question, changing your content can only be a GOOD thing - Google loves fresh content. I mean, think of a blog that ranks highly for its main keyword. The posts on the front page are constantly changing (if it's an active blog), yet it continues to rank for its primary keywords!

[Carl Brown]

Originally Posted by livemusic

What if I have a site where the page is a bit outdated with its info, is it okay to change some text or add some text? Or does this affect SEO?

I've been experimenting with one of my sites which has been sitting at #50 for too long. I saved the original article on the front page, then wrote a new article for it. It dropped to #85 within 24 hours. After the drop, I replaced the original and the next day it was back to #50.

THEN, I wrote another article and it dropped to #75, so I put back the original and it went back to #50 again. This was with no change to the title or description tag or the H1 tag (which is the same as the title).

I'm trying to see if I can move my rankings forward with only content changes. So far the best I can do is #50.

Back up the original in case your original was better.

[markowe]

@Carl, that's pretty interesting, but can you be SURE that's not down to regular fluctuations - coincidence, in other words? 24 hours is very little time for G to index your page AND rerank it, unless it's mega-high traffic, which you say it isn't. On the other hand, it's quite normal for rankings to DROP after major changes, or backlinking, so I might have waited a few more days to see what happened...

[design4life]

More content usually is good for google ranks.

[Carl Brown]

Originally Posted by markowe

@Carl, that's pretty interesting, but can you be SURE that's not down to regular fluctuations - coincidence, in other words? 24 hours is very little time for G to index your page AND rerank it, unless it's mega-high traffic, which you say it isn't. On the other hand, it's quite normal for rankings to DROP after major changes, or backlinking, so I might have waited a few more days to see what happened...

I know. My first change I thought was far better. I originally replaced a 400 word article with, what I thought was a much better 850 word article. I thought that change would push me forward. I panicked when I saw the rankings fall so I put it back the next day.

Since I'm not earning anything from it in position 50, I am thinking of putting the better article back and wait a week or two.

I'm going to do this today and see where it lands in a week.

[gearmonkey]

I thought google wanted us to fix low(er) quality articles to avoid Panda?

I've been editing hundreds of pages to try and fix them to higher quality. My rankings continue to drop.

[yukon]

I'm telling you, If you change that URL or page title your ranking in the SERPs for the page you edited will bounce like crazy, If your lucky.

If you need to do a major edit, just create a new page, then rank the new page. Later on If your not happy with the old page, do a 301 redirect from the old page to the new page.

If the old page is on page #97 in Google SERPs then none of this matters, edit the old page all day long.

[livemusic]

This is what is so confusing and frustrating about SEO. Note the range of responses on this simple question! What to do!

It seems silly that you can't update a page to make it more accurate when you have information that has changed over time.

[cctvinstallers]

Hi I am constantly trying to rank better and can't see how thats possible without trial and error. There is no way anyone can write a great page that's going to get to position 1 in the serps from scratch unless you are targeting a really specific long tail keyphrase.

[strategic seo services]

Originally Posted by livemusic

What if I have a site where the page is a bit outdated with its info, is it okay to change some text or add some text? Or does this affect SEO?

Don't change the URL or the title of the page. and try to maintain the same keyword density.

[livemusic]

Originally Posted by strategic seo services

Don't change the URL or the title of the page. and try to maintain the same keyword density.

What if I did change the URL or the title a year or so ago. Will it eventually come back? (I don't recall where I have done this, but I probably have before.)