[geocrasher]

If I wrote an article in 2015 and freshen it up with more relevant links, better writing, or some other thing, is it still published in 2015? Should I re-date it? Am I "gaming" the system by doing that? Or am I notifying my readers (all 3 of them!) that there is fresh content?

This is actually a real question from me, and I'd love feedback. I look back on my stuff from a few years ago and the blog posts need fixing up, be it for SEO, for my more up to date 'voice' or because I switched to Gutenberg and removed janky slider plugins that haven't been updated since 2014. Should I re-date? Or leave them as-is?

[markosaric]

If you've updated the post to make it more relevant, better, include more recent info... then it certainly makes sense to inform the visitors about it. Either just change the published date to the date you updated it or list the "last updated" date somewhere on the post too.

I know some sites abuse this because of the way that the Google algorithm works, but it is a good practice to list the date you last updated the post so your visitors can see.

For specific topics, I prefer to read more recent info so if I end up on a page that lists "2015" as published date but doesn't tell me that it has been updated since, I may not trust that page as much simply because of the idea I may have that the info may be outdated.

[dorfsmay]

Often dates are extremely relevant, for example a 10 year old hardware review won't be as relevant as a new one. On the other hand, blogs don:t have to be static, some programing technique might still be relevant, but need to be updated for a new version of the language.

Solution: put a "first published" and a "last updated" date, or use a wiki that makes the revisions available online and a way to link to the different revisions.

[mroche]

A variant of that, but something I’d like to see is listing initial publication and current revision/update status (including initial). Then at the bottom of the post put a summary of each update so readers know how the post has evolved.

[disneysockputty]

Did you read TFA? "PUBLISHED TIME", "UPDATED TIME".

The issue is that blogs abuse these fields for SEO purposes.

[thrower123]

Please, for the love of all that is holy, publish new information as a new post, don't silently update old content. You never know when some obscure bit that is contained in the old post that appears to be superseded by new material will turn out to be invaluable.

Enough old content disappears from the internet organically.

[rchaud]

> publish new information as a new post, don't silently update old content.

But the new post likely wouldn't rank as well as the old post, so you are less likely to find it using search. It would be a better user experience if the original post had a clear indicator stating that it was updated with new information on X date.

[geocrasher]

I agree, and will be cross linking posts accordingly.

[patrec]

The most transparent way would be to add a [First Published: ..., last updated: ...] header. But if the content is really reasonably up-to-date wrt the latest publishing date, I don't think you're doing something shady.

[pxtail]

This is actually mentioned in google's documentation - you need datePublished and dateModified: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/article...

Even looking from usability standpoint I think that it is totally okay and even necessary to add 'updated' or 'modified' date. Personally, as a reader I'm relying on article created/updated heavily, if I cannot quickly and easily figure out if article is still relevant and up-to-date I'm usually leaving webpage immediately without even bothering to read.

[greenhatman]

If there are significant changed, I'd rather write a new post.

You can add a link to the new post somewhere on the old post.

[dna_polymerase]

On some topics a new post, titled "X Revisited in 2019" would be the option I'd go for, updating the old article with the link to the new post (without updating the date in the old post).

Granted this would be my personal preference. From an SEO point of view this doesn't make sense, at all.

[geocrasher]

Thank you everyone for the responses! They were quite valuable. I think the best thing to move forward for me is to fix any issues on the old posts, then write new ones as updates to them. It's more content, temporally relevant, and there's no gaming or sense of gaming involved.

Thanks again!

[ghaff]

I would re-date and just include a short note to that effect if I had updates of any material nature.

[mic47]

To me, the date in the blog is indication how relevant it is. So if you updated links and info in 2y blog to make it relevant again, I don't mind if the date would be today. But probably best would be to put 2 dates: original publish date, and date last modification/relevance.

[carapace]

Add a little changelog.