Is Changing Content Bad For SEO?

[Kiril S]

Pretty much what the title says.

I changed my homepage content, and my posts' title and content as well. Will this affect my SEO negatively?

Thanks.

[donkiston]

If you change your home page content of your website. It will effect your website ranking and indexing pages because Google crawl your website totally different method according to your changes.

[MattAdamo]

That's kind of a tough one...

Because on the technical SEO side of things, yes...

If you changed your content to less optimized content then it wont be as optimized and therefore you should see lesser rankings...

however...

I'm going to assume you are using a blog... and if that's the case they are dynamic in nature. Meaning that google understands your content is going to be changing frequently and it looks natural to do so.

Regardless... my recommendation,

Put your optimized post as a sticky post. This gives you the best of both world.s

[InitialEffort]

Yes, your on-page content will certainly affect your SEO.

[promhut729]

Yes, when you change your site's content will affect your ranking

[Kiril S]

I know changing on-page content will affect my ranking, that's kinda obvious lol.

You misunderstood me, I meant if it'll affect me in a bad way.

I'm asking because I changed my homepage to MORE optimized content, as well as my other posts too. Everything has been modified.

[marknel]

If its original and quality content,then it will have a positive effect. Submit your sitemap to SEs for your new content to be crawled.

[Kiril S]

For my homepage, it is all new, original and quality. As for my posts, I've only made minor modifications. (title, links, a little bit of content)

[MrRankExpert]

hi Kiril S you have told that you have changed your page titles and content, it can affect your rankings because your new page titles now contain new keywords and there are chances that your pages may not appear in SERPs for previous keywords. Let the search engines crawl your new content and then see what actually happened.

[dee4d]

I was thinking of creating another website for the main niche / keywords you want to add.. Isn't that the way to go?

[Paul Barrs]

Originally Posted by Kiril S

I know changing on-page content will affect my ranking, that's kinda obvious lol.

You misunderstood me, I meant if it'll affect me in a bad way.

I'm asking because I changed my homepage to MORE optimized content, as well as my other posts too. Everything has been modified.

Kiril, you've pretty much got the answers your going to get -

Yes.

But will it hurt you in a bad way... that all depends on where you are now.

ie. If you were getting page one rankings for any particular page on your site and you went and changed that I'd say you were nuts... but if you were on page 80 and you *didn't* change your content I'd also say you're nuts! Get the idea.

Can it hurt you? Yes. But then so can to much chocolate

Paul Barrs

[Fraggler]

There are stacks of homepages that change their front page content monthly, weekly, daily, hourly. They are commonly referred to as blogs, news sites, Web 2.0. They will still rank fine for their main homepage keywords if that homepage content remains in context; it usually does because it's a quality site.

I know a lot of afflilate marketers like to use the homepage to 'snipe' keywords but if the focus was placed on the inner pages rather than the homepage then your site will be a lot more forgiving to change.

I change inner pages all the time as well: complete rewrites, added images, hundreds of extra and brand new words. The page might move a touch but it usually bounces back to where it came from in no time.

Changes do affect the on-page SEO but the change is often required for a reason that is more important that a shift of a few spots in the SERPs - that you should be able to get back.

Changes to the site's structure, internal linking, and URLs will cause a lot more instability than just content change.

[StoneWilson]

Probably. Unless Google hasn't indexed your home page yet, or you make the homepage more friendly to search engines and visitors.

[alina albert]

On page content is the most important part of SEO.So you have to change content very wisely.

[o2webtech]

Hi, Upgrades are generally made to get quick indexing benefits and it is totally depends on the quality of the content.

[Kiril S]

Okay okay thanks. This website is new, but it got already indexed a few days ago.

As I said, I completely changed the homepage, and I changed the content of my other posts.

Also, since I changed the titles of my posts, their urls changed too.

Does that mean they're going to be counted as new pages?? and my old ones will disappear?

If my old ones do not disappear, will they count as duplicate content?

note: all the updates I did were improvements

[frank07]

Yes, if you change the content the SERP will change, you must put more backlinks to your pages and do not change whole contents.

[Srinagarhouseboats]

It will effect of your site ranking in search engine ,all depends on keyword density of the keywords

[john14317]

Changing contents will not affect your PR. Even more, the top PR sites are updated daily or hourly.

The contents, obviously, determines the search results: if you keep out your article about The man in the moon, i.e., and the googlebots don't find it, a month later you'll never appear more with your article about The man in the moon. Easy and logic.

[upendraets]

No, Changing content is not Bad. But it should be Unique

[C Rebecca]

It depends on the changes you have made on your web pages.

If your new content is well optimized then your new content may rank high.
I would suggest you to conduct AB testing before introducing any changes in your web pages.

[summerfranken]

If the changed content is unique and relevant then there is no effect of it. But if the content create spamming, obviously very harmful.

[MIRENGE]

changing your home page content will definitely effect your ranking

[jcruz]

You should be udating your content regularly, as fas as changing the title h1, h2, etc i wouldn't reccommend it, because at that point you would be targeting an entirely diffrent keyword than you would origonally. Meaning you would have to start from scratch. This is all theoratical, i'm just saying it makes sense. Stick to one keyword and keep updating, your content and target that one keyword. If your constantly tweaking your site, you might want to consider this pluging cbnet Ping Optimizer, it keeps your post from being pinged every time you make an update and keeps you from looking like spam.

[Justinpage]

One negative thing I see in changing your site's content is just it will only affect your SERP ranking for a short period of time because Google needs to re-crawl that particular content.

The good thing about this is that if you change your content with a well-optimized one, it will have greater effects for good.

[chrisen]

If you changed your URL's you may want to redirect to the new one, if you haven't already. I did something similar not too long ago to one of my sites and I had quite a few 404 errors pop up in Webmaster tools. Apparently, Google doesn't like too many 404's. It was a real pain.

[JamesGw]

Your rankings will fluctuate when you change the content. Whether or not this will be positive or negative depends on the content itself. If it's more optimized, then you're likely to see a bump. Likewise, you'll see a drop if it's less optimized.

[Kiril S]

Okay thanks for your replies, and it's funny how many people just answer the thread with only "changing content will affect seo". Are they just posting for their posts number?

I searched google with inurl:"domainname" and found all my new posts already indexed, and my old ones gone. However, my index page hasn't been updated by google yet. I guess all that needs to be done now is wait.

Thanks

[dennyrichs]

yes it will definitely affect your ranking.because if others website have link to your home page for a particular post and you have changed that content in that case it will hurt your ranking if your new article is not related to that niche.but if your new content is more optimized and relative than it will more beneficial for your ranking. thats why some time changing your whole content may be risky.if your new content has been indexed it means search engine has crawled your website.your old pages will be removed you will see soon your updated indexed pages generally it take time of one to two weeks.

[Kiril S]

Woah I just checked my SERP for my keyword, and it's not sitting at #42.
Before the changes I made to my content, it wasn't even in the top 1000.

High quality content is sure a great break dealer.

[theseoguys]

we just drastically changed our content the other week to an entirely new business model. We are still holding a top 10 ranking to our main page, but lost rankings to our inner pages for secondary terms. So, we'll see is my answer. CNN changes it's content every minute if you think about it.

[steveseo]

make sure your content is much relevant with your website tittle keywords, and yes its true updating your website with fresh content daily can effect your SERP ranking

[warner444]

Originally Posted by Kiril S

For my homepage, it is all new, original and quality. As for my posts, I've only made minor modifications. (title, links, a little bit of content)

I think this will probably improve your SEO. Make sure to submit an updated sitemap and it would likely be helpful to ping your updated pages too.

If it is a wordpress blog changing post titles may change your links too. You could 301 redirect from the old link to the new link to make sure you keep any link juice you may have gotten.

There is a WP plugin WordPress › Dean's Permalinks Migration « WordPress Plugins for permalink migration you might find useful

[Roberto L]

I texted some inner pages before and found that sometimes the whole new unique content rank to the top while sometimes it falls down.

I believe that google also 'read' your content to see if it is really useful for viewers, as the more valuable content a page has, the better ranking it shows finally.

[curtainsandblind]

I think u upload good content on your site u get good one's but u do copy content u loss site ranking.

[mistymars]

Originally Posted by Kiril S

Pretty much what the title says.

I changed my homepage content, and my posts' title and content as well. Will this affect my SEO negatively?

Thanks.

Hi Kiril in my opinion, it depends on the relevancy and weight of the
keywords you have used in your metas and content. Spidy's has
their way of organizing things and for sure they will realize the
quality of the changes you have made in your website's main page.
Probably it will fluctuate either up or down. But for sure the result
will be good.

[w1908]

I had very bad results with changing my titles in the past. Wont touch them with a stick anymore...

[barbrine]

Certainly this will hurt your site ranking as well as the long tail keywords ranking that could originally be founded in your posts. However, if your site has only a few posts, then you don't need to worry about the drop of your site ranking. Don't regularly change the content or post title of your site if it has been several years old.

[dennyrichs]

original and quality content always help you to improve your ranking.

[kmachine]

I think that better of changing the content is to add more content.

[randyandrason]

Well,I don't think that its bad to change the content of SEO but infact it is very useful to say that by changing the content within alternate days helps the visitors & people to comment on it.

[Talat10]

In my opinion, it could affect the ranking and the new content would take some time to get indexed everywhere.

[james7]

Changing content is not bad but it will affect your website ranking, as pages takes time to index. Also it affects traffic.

[dreamer31]

If you are improving your content and replacing duplicate content that is great for SEO. In any case, it is good to made some changes on sites and get noticed by search engines.

[MatthewGreen]

It depends on how you are changing your content. If you are better optimizing it and adding more useful information about your niche Google will love that. They love fresh content.

[HorseStall]

Originally Posted by Kiril S

Pretty much what the title says.

I changed my homepage content, and my posts' title and content as well. Will this affect my SEO negatively?

It depends, it can have a positive or negative effect on SEO, depends on what you changed it too. In general adding content is a good thing, however removing content that performs well in search results can be risky.

[MKTNG]

Quite the redundant thread, nevertheless helpful. Thanks for posting your question OP, I think you've got a pretty solid answer at this point

[mindtricks18]

Undoubtedly It will effect your website Ranking. if you have done off page SEO for current website with that content .

[hyundiaeon]

According to my point of view I will suggests that changing the content is not bad for SEO but one must maintain the sites PR & style for writing the comment.I hope you understood the thing.

[NiceBlogger]

It will affect it , but it's not for sure if it will be affected negatively or positively,depends of your content.If you want to find out more, just read here : Backlinks Pagerank,Number and Anchor Text could definitely change the way that Google see your website. This way you can keep your website's SEO in a positively way...