Google's John Mueller said on Twitter, with the disclaimer of him putting his user hat on (not Google hat), that relabeling old content as new, without any additional changes is a bad SEO hack. He said it is bad for the user, causes frustration when they find out and doesn't give your users the respect they deserve, he said.
John shared a tweet about the "strategy" of changing title tags from 2018 to 2019, for example - Best SEO Practices in 2018 to be changed to Best SEO Practices in 2019. Here is that tweet:
@randfish @neilpatel @JohnMu @sejournal @Backlinko As we are heading towards 2019, all Title tags on 31 dec will be changed to How to Rank in 2019 or To 100000 ways to Rank in 2019.#SEO hack☺
— Anil Thakur (@anilthakur2u) August 15, 2018
John said "as a user, recognizing that old content is just being relabeled as new completely kills any authority that I thought the author / site had." "Good content is not lazy content," he added. "SEO hacks don't make a site great. Give your content and users the respect they deserve," he said.
As a user, recognizing that old content is just being relabeled as new completely kills any authority that I thought the author / site had. Good content is not lazy content. SEO hacks don't make a site great. Give your content and users the respect they deserve. https://t.co/aEWhH0KnGw
— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) August 15, 2018
John explained that this does not mean you should not maintain old content, he said maintaining old content is a good thing. But relabeling content with no real change is a disservice to your readers. John added "Maintaining and updating (or even deleting, when needed) content to make sure it's not out of date is awesome. It doesn't guarantee ranking well, but not maintaining it at all is much worse."
So if your 2019 SEO strategy is to relabel a bunch of your content from saying 2018 to 2019, maybe find something more productive to do?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
