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Updating an article, effect on ranking?

by jendoe
10 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi everyone!

Awhile back, I jumped on board with the "Angela experiment". My little article has popped up to #1 on Google for it's keyword phrase (yay!) and stayed there pretty solidly with very little extra effort (double yay!) and seems to be getting a good number of views each day.

It's currently had more than 4000 views - this blows every other article I've written before completely out of the water (heck, I was excited by 25-30 views before !)

BUT - it doesn't seem to be getting alot of clickthroughs.

I'm tempted to try rewriting the resource box (assuming I can do this, it's on GoArticles).

If I do this - will I mess up my Google ranking? Will the page end up with a new url (which would screw up the backlinks)? Any other problems?

Oh - and I've gotten 1 sale so far! My very first one! Not a great conversion rate for 4000+ views but my first sale so far, so a nice milestone! (Of course, CB won't give me the money til I jump through all their hoops, but still.. yay!)

I'm moving on to trying some new, other stuff, so I can keep learning and trying... but if I can play with the resource box, I'd love the chance to see if I can make it a little more effective...

Hmmm if that's not a good idea, I guess I could try doing another, similar article, backlinking that, and comparing the results.... could be interesting too...

Thanks!
#article #effect #ranking #updating
  • Profile picture of the author nettech
    How relevant is your resource box to your article? Ive found from experience that if my bio is tightly aligned to my article content, I generally get a higher CTR.

    Not sure about the ranking element, sorry! Woudl be quite interesting to know!
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    Zaheer

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  • Profile picture of the author parkerli
    I have had the same question; I am writing KW articles on Investing, specifically IPOs. I would tend to think that a tinkered article would end up as "brand new" and would have to go theough the Google ranking process all over again.

    I am looking back at some of my articles and just want to screw with them. I do though have some "lesser quality" articles and I'll mess with them and see if there is any change. Will advise.

    Tim
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  • Profile picture of the author HarrisonJ
    Changing your resource box will probably not effect your search ranking.

    Just remember that when updating articles, it is best to add more content than remove. Removing content might hurt your rankings.
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  • Profile picture of the author jendoe
    Thanks!

    Nettech - Hmmm, honestly, I'm not sure how closely tied they are. I haven't looked at it since I put it up (didn't want to artificially inflate that "view count" - although at this point, it's less of a concern!) I think it was really something I put together pretty quickly, because I was dying to try out the backlinking and see how it would work... So it's likely that I didn't pay enough attention to the resource box, and just threw something together...

    Oooh Tim! If you do it, please let me know! I'd love to hear your experience!

    Thanks Vaan !

    Thanks Harrison... the advice sounds good. At this point, I don't really want to change the article itself (hmmm though it IS goarticles, so it might be nice to try adding a link inside the article, to see if that helps clickthrough)... really just want to see if I can improve the resource box.)

    I'll have to think a bit more here. It's a great chance to try something and learn from it, but honestly, I'm sort of giddy thinking of how many people read my little article! Just thinking that 4000 people actually came by and read what I wrote - ! wow !

    Thanks!
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    • Profile picture of the author Joshua.E1
      I have not try updating on an article, but I did use it on blog post.

      Yes it will actually pull your ranking down for a while (even if I did better on-page optimization), then it will eventually go up again.

      I guess it will be the same thing happens, but I have a good news for you.

      Is that if you intent to change your resources box details, then make sure you write it like a mini sales letter and increase conversion to wherever you are bring them to.
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      Joshua
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      • Profile picture of the author steve39
        I update my articles on occasion and it doesn't seem to affect the serp rankings - and I have had a few on the first page. This includes changing the body and resource box. I made the mistake of changing the title once - not thinking, I added an exclamation point. This, of course, changed the url and the listing was gone. Changed it back once I realized what I'd done and it took a few weeks to come back.

        Steve
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        • Profile picture of the author Vaan
          I am thinking on write your resources box with CAPITAL LETTER, it's not violated the TOS?

          As you see capital letter is easier to get attracted to than average letter
          Just wondering about that,

          Cheers,
          Vaan
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          • Profile picture of the author Burtgummer
            What about updating an Ezine article? I just wrote a new article yesterday with a resource box that is performing at a 45% CTR, which is well above my other articles.

            I think Ezine takes the article down until it is re-reviewed, instead of leaving the current one up and replacing them when the edited one is approved. I'd really like to add this new resource box to my older articles though.
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            “Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.” -Nikola Tesla

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  • Profile picture of the author kylelmoon
    The reason why your ranking will probably change after you update the article maybe because Google has to refresh it's page cache to match your updated page. I guess this re-caching will trigger recomputation on your backlinks-page rank. But you don't have to worry if you got solid links from great sites.
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