You visit a site and the homepage says “Summer sale until 31 August” while the calendar shows November. What do you think? Most likely, “is this business still open?” Outdated content doesn't shout; it quietly costs you trust. The visitor leaves without saying anything, and you never find out why.
The cost of outdated content
The most concrete cost is price. If the price on the site differs from the one quoted on the phone, the customer either haggles or loses trust. Both make the sales conversation harder. Charging a different price from the one advertised on your site can also cause problems under consumer law.
The second cost is in search. On topics where freshness matters, Google can favour new, maintained content. A pricing article with “2023” in its title is unlikely to get clicked by someone searching in 2026.
The third is newer: AI assistants. ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI overviews can read information on your site and pass it on to users. If your site has an old price or the address of a closed branch, that information can be repeated in an assistant's answer, outside your control. Current, dated content is one of the most reliable ways to be quoted correctly in these sources too.
Which pages need updating, and how often?
Not every page needs the same attention.
Pricing and campaign pages: with every change, plus a monthly check. An expired campaign should come down the same day.
Contact details and opening hours: with every change, and always before public holidays. Update them together with your Google Business Profile.
Service pages: every three months. Is there a new service, a changed process, a new reference to add?
About, team and references: once a year, or when the team changes. A former employee's photo shouldn't stay on the team page.
Blog posts: a review once a year. Legal texts (KVKK, cookies, sales agreement): once a year and whenever the legislation changes, ideally with your lawyer.
Refreshing old blog posts
Blog posts age, but they don't all deserve the same treatment. Look at the last 12 months of data in Search Console and sort posts into three groups.
Posts that still bring traffic but whose information is out of date are the most valuable group. Update the figures, screenshots and examples, and add questions that have come up since. Don't change the URL.
If several weak posts cover the same topic, merge them into one strong post. Point the others' URLs to the new post with permanent redirects.
Deleting posts that get no traffic and are no longer accurate is also an option. Add a redirect, or old links will land on an error page.
We explained how to build a blog post properly from the start in our guide to SEO-friendly blog posts.
Showing the update date
Showing a “Last updated” date on posts tells readers the information is fresh. But the date has to mean something. Changing only the date without touching the content misleads readers, and sooner or later someone notices.
Our rule: if a figure, a method or an important piece of information changed, we update the date. Fixing a typo doesn't call for a new date.
A three-month calendar template
Repeat this calendar at the start of each quarter. For most small business sites, an hour or two a month is enough.
Month one:
- Check pricing and campaign pages
- Are contact details, opening hours and Google Business Profile consistent?
- Fill in the form yourself to test it
Month two:
- Pick two posts with falling traffic in Search Console and update them
- Add a new example of your work or a reference to service pages (with the client's permission)
- Scan for broken links
Month three:
- Publish one new piece of content (the question customers asked most in the last three months is a good start)
- Review the team and about pages
- Is there a holiday, season or campaign next quarter? Prepare content for it
Give the calendar to one person. A job that “everyone keeps an eye on” usually gets done by no one. This content routine is separate from technical maintenance (updates, backups, security) and runs alongside it; you'll find the technical checklist in our post on website maintenance.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does adding content often improve rankings?
Frequency alone doesn't earn you much. What Google cares about is content being useful and accurate. One post a month that answers a real question well can do more than weekly shallow posts. Keeping existing pages current is as valuable as adding new ones.
Blog posts are for general information only and are not a substitute for legal, financial or technical advice.