Affiliate site owners: do you Republish your yearly review posts each year or simply update them?

[Execute]

I had asked this question earlier, but it was tucked away in an obscure comment hidden on another thread.
So I wanted to create a thread for it for wider exposure and more input, to sample what most people in our community here do.

For those who own affiliate sites, do you republish your yearly review posts each year, (on the same url), to make it look current?
(Eg for a post like: Best running shoes 2021).
When updating it to 2022, do you change the original publish date in Wordpress to a new publish date in 2022 to make it look more current?
(Of course it's still on the same url, you're just changing the date of publication in Wordpress from the original date to a new, recent one.)

Or do you simply make your edits to the content and click Update, without touching the original published date?

Why do you choose to do whichever one you do?

Personally, I'm currently more inclined towards republishing (changing the original published date to a new one after editing, on the same url).
My own reason for that is that if I leave the original published date untouched, Google will now have the option of choosing from 2 dates to show in the SERPs (the original published date and the date it was last updated).

From my experience with one of the pages I updated, Google still chose to show the original published date in the Serps instead of the last updated date.
And this is even after it picked up the new updates I made to the post, yet it still chose to display the original published date from last year, instead of the 2022 last-updated date. (Despite my using Wp Last Modified Info plugin to show both the original and last updated dates on the post).

So I'm thinking if I republish the post by actually changing the date of publication instead of just updating it, Google will now be forced to use the new date of publishing as the date it shows in the Serps. Because the original date of publication will be overruled by the new date of publication.

Are there any flaws in this my thinking?
(Before I make the mistakes, lol).
My only worry is if I republish, maybe it might take a long time for google to start ranking the post well, given the new publish date.
But I had read that as long as you're publishing it on the same url, this shouldn't be a problem as google still knows it is the same old post, so will not "sandbox" it like it would do to a new post.

What are your thoughts on this.
What do you do on your own sites and why?
Thanks.

 

[bernard]

I change "Published on" to "Last updated on" in the schema and dateModified.

There's a discussion about this on the forum somewhere, try searching for it.

 

[Execute]

I change "Published on" to "Last updated on" in the schema and dateModified.

There's a discussion about this on the forum somewhere, try searching for it.

Thanks, I'll search again and see what I can find. When I searched initially I didn't get very good results, maybe because I'm not yet used to the forum's search feature and how best to type keywords to get the best results.

Do you use a plugin or you use code to effect the change in your site.
If it's a plugin, do you mind saying which one?

 

[Ryuzaki]

This is the thread: Publish Date, Last Updated, Query Deserves Freshness, & Google Fresh Rank

I did some testing, figured out how to get Google to follow my lead instead of their own, and shared how to do it, and also pretty much how to trick their freshness score without needing to update the content, which I'm sure will get dealt with eventually. But for now you can sneak out nice bumps of traffic.

Ultimately, if you want to really twist Google's arm into showing the date you want, that needs to be the only date on the page and in the source code.

There's two ways of doing that:

• stripping the original date out of the source code and off the page and leaving only the last modified date (calling it what you want)
• changing the original published date as you've proposed. Many people do this and it works just fine for them, though they lose track of that data in their own dashboard

The 2nd option is the easiest for the non-developer. The first is possible for someone who can manage to do it (editing the theme, changing plugin functionality with hooks, etc.). It's not that hard but can require a lot of annoyance for a simple change, like needing to set up child themes and all that.

 

[MrMedia]

Add 500 words of new content and maybe an image or two then save the new publish date. Freshness is doing wonders for my traffic even in evergreen niches.

Should also add - it seems that it takes around 2 months for my updates to have an impact. Normally get a nice bump when the new content is detected.

 

[Bob_the_Builder]

Is there any benefit in showing the published date & modified date? I am doing this currently.

I think this is the best setup for the user. The user is seeing; this post was published in 2020, but updated in 2022. For the SERP, Google can choose between the two.

Do I miss out on rankings by doing this?

An alternative which I am considering is to change all the published dates tot 2022, and only display the last published date on each post.

Should also add - it seems that it takes around 2 months for my updates to have an impact. Normally get a nice bump when the new content is detected.

Do you update the content again after the two months, or more like yearly?

 

[MrMedia]

Do you update the content again after the two months, or more like yearly?

Depends really - I circle around after 6 months and review all posts that are ranking 4-20 and then update them with more content.

Repeat until in top 3 or stuck and then just move on.

 

[Execute]

This is the thread: Publish Date, Last Updated, Query

Very kind of you.
I've gone with the second option you and MrMedia mentioned, that's changing date of publishing.
My mantra is always: the simpler, the better....unless "more complex" definitely does the job better.
In this case, it appears that, as long as you're keeping the data of the original date you first published the posts recorded somewhere (so you don't lose track of that information if you need it), it's simply better to just change the published date after making significant improvements to the article and move on.

And @MrMedia, nice tips and pointers. Have already started applying them right away. Will see how it pans out over time.