TL;DR: There’s no set schedule for updating your website content for SEO. Check your most important pages every six to twelve months as a safety net, but update a page when the evidence says it needs it: its traffic or rankings are slipping, its information is out of date, or a competitor now answers the question better. Changing only the date doesn’t count as an update, and Google’s content guidance includes it in its checklist for spotting content made for search engines first.
A page that answered a question well two years ago can quietly stop doing so. Facts change, competitors publish better answers, and advice goes out of date. So the useful question isn’t how often to update your SEO content; it’s how you know when a page needs it. For most businesses, we recommend a regular look at the pages that matter most, with updates going first to the ones that are slipping or have gone stale.
“Clients, and often SEOs early on in the job, can see content as something that needs to be cycled through from start to finish. Especially when working with smaller retainers, it’s important to take note of how your pages are performing, even after you’ve already optimised them. The current search landscape has moved a lot of success to AI search, so we also need to prioritise this now, as well as organic, over an arbitrary optimisation schedule.” – Amy Varley, Senior SEO Executive
What Tells You a Page Needs Updating
Rather than working to a date, watch for these signals on the pages that matter most to your business:
- Traffic or rankings have trended down over several months, not just a single dip.
- The information has gone stale: a statistic, a price, a screenshot of an interface that has changed, or advice based on an older version of a tool or platform.
- A competitor’s page gives a fuller or clearer answer to the same question and is outranking yours.
- The page never fully answered the question it was written for, and that has become clearer over time.
A page that’s still accurate, still ranks well and still answers the question doesn’t need touching just because time has passed. If a page has dropped suddenly rather than slipping gradually, our guide to diagnosing SEO ranking drops can help you find the cause before you start rewriting.
Why Changing the Date Doesn’t Help
Bumping the “last updated” date, rewording a sentence or two and hoping the page reads as fresh is a common shortcut. Google’s guidance on creating helpful content includes it in its checklist for spotting content made for search engines rather than people, asking site owners: “Are you changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed?” It says the same about adding or removing lots of content just to make a site seem fresher overall: that won’t help your rankings.
That doesn’t mean freshness never matters. Google says it has “query deserves freshness” systems designed to show fresher content for queries where it would be expected, such as reviews of a film that has just been released, or news after an earthquake. For most evergreen business content, that isn’t the situation. If the advice is still correct, an older date doesn’t mean the page needs rewriting, although it can put some readers off. If your pages show a “last updated” date, change it only when the content has genuinely changed.
“While reviewing a first aid training provider’s informational content, we found a downloadable PDF that was out of date and still listed Covid-19 as an example hazard. As part of the optimisation, we flagged it for a full update before promoting it on the page, so an outdated file becomes an up-to-date, genuinely useful resource that can also help capture leads.” – Kezia Humphries, SEO Account Manager
Does Requesting Indexing Get You Noticed Faster?
Once a page has genuinely changed, you can ask Google to recrawl it rather than waiting for its next visit. Google’s documentation says to use the URL Inspection tool in Search Console to request a crawl of an individual URL. It also says that “Requesting a crawl does not guarantee that inclusion in search results will happen instantly or even at all,” that crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and that asking more than once for the same URL won’t get it crawled any faster. There is also a quota for submitting individual URLs.
So requesting indexing is worth doing for a page you’ve genuinely improved, but it’s a request to crawl, and Google does not say it will help the update rank. There is little point in requesting a recrawl of a page that has not really changed.
What a Genuine Update Involves
A worthwhile update usually means:
- Correcting specific facts, figures, prices or dates that have actually changed.
- Rewriting a recommendation that’s now out of step with current best practice.
- Expanding a section that never fully answered the reader’s question, rather than adding length for its own sake.
- Checking what’s currently ranking well for the same query and making sure your page still holds up against it.
- Fixing broken or outdated links, including ones pointing to pages that no longer exist.
For the practical side of making these changes, our post on how to refresh old content for SEO covers the mechanics in more depth. This post is about deciding when a page has earned a place on that list.
Top Tip: Before you choose between a light update and a rewrite, write down in one sentence the question the page is meant to answer. If that question and the core answer haven’t changed, and only the supporting detail has gone stale, such as a statistic, an example or a screenshot, update that detail and leave the structure alone. A competitor giving a fuller answer doesn’t automatically mean a full rewrite either: it can just mean tightening the section where they’re ahead. Rebuild the page only when the core answer no longer holds up.
Refreshing Content FAQs
How often should I update my website content for SEO? Is every six or twelve months right?
We suggest checking your most important pages every six to twelve months, as a backstop so nothing goes unreviewed for years. Treat that as a safety net, not the trigger. The pages that need attention are the ones losing traffic or rankings, or giving advice that has gone out of date, and that can happen well before or after any fixed date.
Does changing the “last updated” date help my rankings?
No, not on its own. Google’s guidance includes changing a page’s date without substantially changing the content in its checklist for spotting content made for search engines rather than readers.
Does requesting indexing in Search Console make a page rank higher?
Google’s documentation doesn’t say it does. It’s a request for Google to recrawl a page, which is how you ask for another look at a genuine update, but it doesn’t guarantee when, or whether, the page is included in results.
How do I decide which pages to update first?
We’d start with the pages that matter most commercially and show a real decline in traffic, rankings or conversions over several months. After that, look at pages containing time-sensitive facts, such as prices, statistics or tool interfaces, which are the most likely to have gone out of date.
How Wildcat Handles This
Deciding which pages to update is usually harder than making the update. Our SEO content writing service includes overhauling existing content as well as creating new pages. The work starts with keyword research, mapping and strategy before a clear roadmap is created, and content is reviewed regularly once it’s live.
To get started, tell us which pages matter most to your business and what you need them to do. You can do that through our contact page, where you can also book a free 30-minute consultation with our growth team.
Molly Sturgeon
Senior SEO Account Manager
