I run an online business and am trying to maintain my front page Google and Yahoo search results. My website is not updated often and I’m slipping to the second pages. Do search engines pay any attention to how old web pages are (via sitemap.xml dates) and give priority to newer or more frequently updated web pages?
Thanks.
Please provide details and any links that are available.
Search engines do pay attention to age but it depends on your site topic as well. For example, if you have a website about Hollywood, you are going to want to have a lot of new content. The search engines will look for that and domain age may be less of a factor. However, if you have a site on the civil war, ‘breaking news’ content isn’t going to be all that important. If you have an older domain that may be more important for that type of site.
Search engines also tend to place more value to websites that have been around a long time. If you have one of the first sites on the web about a topic you will have an inherent advantage over a brand new site.
I doubt the xml sitemaps dates matter much. It would be too easy to fake those. They probably go by the first date that your site or page was discovered by them.
Yes. Search engines, love fresh content. They consider it to be more relevant because it is more up-to date.
References :
Search engines do pay attention to age but it depends on your site topic as well. For example, if you have a website about Hollywood, you are going to want to have a lot of new content. The search engines will look for that and domain age may be less of a factor. However, if you have a site on the civil war, ‘breaking news’ content isn’t going to be all that important. If you have an older domain that may be more important for that type of site.
Search engines also tend to place more value to websites that have been around a long time. If you have one of the first sites on the web about a topic you will have an inherent advantage over a brand new site.
I doubt the xml sitemaps dates matter much. It would be too easy to fake those. They probably go by the first date that your site or page was discovered by them.
References :
Older websites which have stacked out certain "Keywords" really do not lose their PR due to aging or lack of refreshed copy. Once you claim those older keywords for your website, you will not be displaced in your PR unless your competitors resort to Black Hat SEO.
Good luck!
References :
I currently have a website which is ranked PR1 out of 16.5 million search results, and it’s never been updated for around 9 years.