You will be able to decide when to update, merge or remove a page, and you will know which changes only pretend a page is fresh.
Change a page when the facts in it change, and say on the page what changed. Move its date forward only when the content has been substantially updated. If nothing has changed, leave the date where it is.
Priya runs a tuition centre with a P5 class page and a blog (an invented example). For the new year she updated the P5 page by changing the timetable. In the same update she added answers to two questions parents had kept asking over the previous term, so returning parents found something new and accurate. She put a short note on the page: "Updated in March: new P5 class times and fees".
A page needs updating when the facts in it change. Common triggers are prices rising, a service being added or dropped, opening hours changing, a rule or syllabus being revised, and your own method improving while the page still describes the old way. Each of these is a real change in facts, offer or method.
When you update, change the page content and state what changed. A short note near the top or bottom of the page tells returning readers what is different and shows the page is maintained. An update is also a chance to improve the page, for example by answering questions customers keep asking, as Priya did.
Change the date only because the content was substantially updated. Then record the change in your SEO log from Lesson 3.5, Audit and fix one priority page, so you can check its effect later in Search Console.
Some websites show an "updated" date on every article and move it forward each month while the content stays the same. You might open an article marked "Updated January" and find a scheme that ended two years ago and a price not charged since before the pandemic. Readers notice stale content sitting under a recent date.
Changing a page's date to make it seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed is faking freshness, and Google's guidance names it specifically. Google's helpful content guidance includes a question asking whether you change page dates to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed, and Google lists this among the signs of content made for search engines first. A searcher who picks your page because it says "updated this month" and then finds stale information has been misled. Date-stamp tricks also waste your time, because Google's systems are trying to see through them.
A page that has gone unchanged for two years because nothing in it has changed is fine. Evergreen explanations, such as a clear explanation of how heuristics work, do not go out of date monthly.
Many small business sites have several short pages covering the same topic. Blogs that have run for a few years often hold multiple incomplete posts on similar subjects, written at different times. These pages compete with each other for the same searches, the problem you met in Lesson 2.5, Build your keyword map. When none of them is good enough on its own, merging usually works better than keeping them separate.
Mei Ling runs a cake business with a blog. She had three short posts of a few paragraphs each: "How to store a birthday cake", "Keeping your cake fresh" and "Can you freeze a cake?". She merged them into one page on storing and freezing cakes, with a section for each situation, and redirected the three old addresses to the new page.
To merge your own pages, find the thin pages covering the same topic, combine the best material into one stronger page at the clearest address, and set permanent redirects from each old address to it. Lesson 4.4, Moves, redirects and broken pages, shows how to set those redirects up.
Remove a page when it has no useful content, no visitors and no real replacement, such as a post announcing an event from four years ago. Once you have confirmed all three, let the page return a 404, or redirect it if a genuinely related page exists.
Topics that change often should be reviewed on a schedule instead of waiting until you notice a change. Fast-changing topics are subjects involving government rules, rates, caps or schemes that official bodies can revise. A financial adviser's page on CPF contributions or tax relief depends on figures the CPF Board and IRAS can revise. A tuition centre's page referring to the PSLE format depends on what the Ministry of Education and SEAB currently publish.
For each such page, set a fixed review date: every quarter, every six months, or soon after the official body usually announces changes. On that date, check every figure and rule against the official source, update anything that has changed, and note the date you checked. Where a figure changes often, it is better to tell the reader where to look it up and link to the official page than to repeat a number that may go out of date.
Go through each existing page on your site, give it one of four labels, and write the reason beside it:
Keep: the page is accurate and useful as it is. Update: the facts or the offer have changed, or the page could clearly serve the searcher better. Merge: the page overlaps with another and both would be better as one. Remove: the page has no useful content and no replacement.
Priya did this with her blog. She labelled eleven posts: six keep, two update, two to merge into one, and one remove. It took her under an hour and gave her a clear job list. Act on each label using the steps above, and set a review date for any page on a fast-changing topic.
In the activity below, label five of your own pages keep, update, merge or remove, and write the reason beside each label.
Take five pages already on your site. Mark each one keep, update, merge or remove, and write down why.
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