Keeping your articles up to date is always a good idea, as it shows to your readers that your site offers current and relevant information. Furthermore, search engines will pick up on changes to your articles, and consider your site alive and up to date. That’s never a bad thing, right?
It’s especially important that you keep your cornerstone content articles up to date, but many other pages will benefit from updating as well. One question remains, though: what to do with the publish date? You may worry that people don’t want to read a blogpost that was published five years ago, even if the content is evergreen or if you’ve updated it just last week. Want to know how we handle the publish date on updated articles at Yoast? Let’s check this week’s question!
Kees van den Berg emailed us saying,
We’re often advised to update old articles. What to do with the publish date? Republish it on a new date? Or add a note that it has been updated?
Watch the video or read the transcript further down the page for my answer!
What to do with the publish date on updated articles
“Now we do this all the time on Yoast.com, we go through our old content and we update as necessary. If we completely rewrite the article or if a major part of the article is new, then we actually publish on a new date.
If only a tiny portion of the article changes, then we add a note to the article that we’ve updated it and we keep the old date. It’s that simple… so a bit of both. Good luck.”
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In the series Ask Yoast, we answer SEO questions from our readers. Have an SEO-related question? Maybe we can help you out! Send an email to ask@yoast.com.
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Read more: ‘Keep your content fresh and up to date!’ »