How to structure content - new vs old

[jäger]

Bad title, and I may be overthinking this, but it's a problem I've had many a times, so thought I'd ask:

Say you sell kitchen appliances, and for 2016 you created this killer "best cheap food processors 2016" rundown and you're lucky enough to get it ranking for "cheap food processors".

2017 rolls around and you'll have to update your piece. You can't just change the year, because your audience is really into food processors and know exactly if it's this years or last years model.

Your article slug is example.com/cheap-food-processors-2016, and you think to yourself "I'll just create /cheap-food-processors-2017", write it out and start promoting.

And this is pretty much how I've been doing it, but there are a few issues with this strategy:
a) you'll wind up with a bunch of almost identical slugs/page names, only difference is the year
b) you've already promoted the 2016 version, so that one has all the links, shares, comments, etc., so it's back to square one with the 2017 edition, and you're practically competing with last year's

Now, you could just go example.com/cheap-food-processors and append the year to the page name, and have that page as the only one of its kind, and just update it continuously with new models. That would keep all incoming signals on the page year after year, but then what do you do with the old content?

In a non-evergreen vertical where new models are added all the time it makes sense to update the article, but if that means removing a 3k word overview of older models, is that the way to go? Or would you move the old content off to a new page? It wouldn't be "relevant" content anymore, but wouldn't you still want it on your site?

OK you get it. Thoughts?

 

[Frog]

One option is rather than changing the content to write something new that is large and impressive and link to that from your old piece. This is perhaps going against the grain in that everyone is saying these days to revisit old content and pad it out, however, if you have taken the old 2016 appraoch of 500-600 words for your "money content" as I suspect you did from your wording above you could relegate the old post to a supporing piece and create real money content going forward with the old content now becoming supporting.

 

[Ryuzaki]

You could change the slug to not mention the year and 301 the -2016 version to it. Or you could write the 2017 version and 301 the -2016 to it.

In the first case, you could add new models to the top and push the 2016 down, and if a model still makes the list then you could make internal anchor "jump" links to push people to the review from last year.

There's tons of options and I wouldn't stress about it, but I'd keep the juice if you want to keep the rankings. That's the only reason I wouldn't do a supporting piece like @Frog mentioned. If your concern was strictly for -2017 long-tails then I'd do that. But your concern seems to be with the short-tail.

 

[jäger]

I dont add year in my slug, Also when changing the content I make sure if the keyword and how many times it appears in that text. Then in the new content insert that amount same to same.

One option is rather than changing the content to write something new that is large and impressive and link to that from your old piece. This is perhaps going against the grain in that everyone is saying these days to revisit old content and pad it out, however, if you have taken the old 2016 appraoch of 500-600 words for your "money content" as I suspect you did from your wording above you could relegate the old post to a supporing piece and create real money content going forward with the old content now becoming supporting.

I specifically gave the example of a 3k word article, so not sure why you think I write money content in the 500-600 range. And that's part of the reason for my question. Discarding a 500 word shallow article wouldn't be a problem, but these are generally high quality and lengthy pieces (ladies, holla), so while they wouldn't be up-to-date for the user, the article would still be "good", for lack of better word.

So you're suggesting that I have, like, a /cheap-food-processors, and use that as a base, and then move content away to new "supporting" pages as it grows old and stale?

My issue with that just is that I'm essentially creating new pages, for old articles. I don't know if it matters, but it's a weird way of going about it in the eye of Google, I would think, no? Did cross my mind though.

You could change the slug to not mention the year and 301 the -2016 version to it. Or you could write the 2017 version and 301 the -2016 to it.

In the first case, you could add new models to the top and push the 2016 down, and if a model still makes the list then you could make internal anchor "jump" links to push people to the review from last year.

There's tons of options and I wouldn't stress about it, but I'd keep the juice if you want to keep the rankings. That's the only reason I wouldn't do a supporting piece like @Frog mentioned. If your concern was strictly for -2017 long-tails then I'd do that. But your concern seems to be with the short-tail.

Correct, my concern is not having the juice on the page that is ranking for the short tail, and essentially having to start over the year after, going for the exact same term just with the new year appended.

So you would just push the 2016 content down below? I already do those ToC type internal links, so making the jump wouldn't be a problem, I just think it would turn into a giant clusterfuck of an article, from different years. I see the benefits, though. Guess it could work.

Thanks in any event

 

[CCarter]

Now, you could just go example.com/cheap-food-processors and append the year to the page name, and have that page as the only one of its kind, and just update it continuously with new models. That would keep all incoming signals on the page year after year, but then what do you do with the old content?

I keep the year off and simply update the content. I am in a more evergreen niche, but for your example and audience I would take the time to just update the content and remove the old content altogether.

If you think about it from a user standpoint there is no actual benefit to the old content unless they want to compare, and if so most of the time it'll just be one year back.

I can't imagine why someone would care for a piece of the top food processors from 2007 compared to 2017. Maybe you can come in with "For 4 years in a row XYZ took the #1 spot".

When in doubt I would look at examples working extremely great in the wild, what would TheWireCutter do? They would update ALL their content pieces instead of write brand new ones. (https://www.buildersociety.com/threads/interview-with-the-founder-of-wirecutter.1995/)

 

[jäger]

I can't imagine why someone would care for a piece of the top food processors from 2007 compared to 2017. Maybe you can come in with "For 4 years in a row XYZ took the #1 spot".

They wouldn't. Keeping the old content would be purely to beef up the site in the eyes of search engines, since users would obviously prefer the new and updated content. It's simply a matter of not wanting to just throw away the old content.

Good example on TheWireCutter, thanks.