Editor’s note: “Ask an SEO” is a weekly column by technical SEO expert Jenny Halasz. Come up with your hardest SEO question and fill out our form. You might see your answer in the next #AskanSEO post!
Welcome to another edition of Ask an SEO! Today’s question comes from Kevin. He asks:
I handle the online marketing/website development for a B2B consulting company. After overhauling our homepage, and cleaning up much of the content, my boss tells me that he wants the homepage redone every month.
He is under the impression that it will “look better” in the eyes of Google, and help with rankings.
I told him this is not true, but he sees a well-known brand do it, so clearly that relates to our B2B website. I need a simple, flat answer, and I’m hoping an expert with the Search Engine Journal can save me the grief and headache of having to argue this.
I’ll start with an apology. There’s not really any such thing as a simple, flat answer in SEO.
But if I had to give you one in this case, it would be no.
No, it isn’t necessary to change your homepage once a month to succeed in SEO.
This idea probably comes from an SEO idea called “freshness”, which suggests that fresher content has more value in the eyes of the search engines.
This can be true in certain cases, especially when it comes to time-sensitive information or news.
But fresh content isn’t valuable for all types of websites.
Further, freshness and time relevance usually applies to pages that are about specific topics, not a general page like a home page.
Unless you are a news organization, your home page probably doesn’t change all that frequently.
A commercial site like Apple changes because they promote different or newer products, but as you’ve pointed out in your question, that’s different than a B2B website where the products or services usually stay the same.
A final consideration is the development time it would require to update the home page once per month. Most likely you would find a better return on investment for that time and expense if you use it to create new content or improve the user experience of the existing site.
In general, I recommend encouraging your boss to make things better for your users, whether that’s a more intuitive design, more FAQs, content about how to use your products or services, or helpful industry commentary.
It may seem contrary, but focusing on users rather than search engines will almost always result in more successful SEO.
Have a question about SEO for Jenny? Fill out this form or use #AskAnSEO on social media.
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