Do you really need fresh content for SEO?

What is "freshness," anyway? I have two definitions: the wrong and mine.

Wrong: "Fresh content is content recently published or updated."

Mine: "Fresh content is content updated to the last available information."

There is a difference between freshness and frequency. If you think that this phrase is enough to close the debate, trust your instinct. If you also suppose that I cannot help myself writing more words, you are right again.

I'll make my case using a few actual keywords and user intention. Let's look at these searches.

When Napoleon died?

What are Umberto Eco's books?

What are Stephen King's books?

Who won the last World Cup?

Is it going to be sunny tomorrow?

Dolar price in euros

Napoleon died in 1821. It doesn't matter what kind of content you aim to create; it's fixed. It is not going to change. Do you think you need to create "fresh" content to get traffic for that query? The same piece of content could be ranking for years without any modification.

The list of books by Umberto Eco and Stephen King are different. Since Eco died in 2016, we know as a fact that the list of books is not going to change. King, on the other hand, publishes one novel and several short stories a year. In Eco's list, content can be static. In King's case, content should be updated once or twice a year to reflect his last publications.

"Who won the last World Cup?" is content with an exact duration: 4 years. You don't need to update that piece of content more than that, once every 48 months.

So, if you understand freshness the same way I do, you can create content with a longer lifespan. Maybe you can optimize trying to increase its reach from time to time, but not for "freshness" because you are good if you have published the latest information available.

The last query (Dollar price in euros), in the complete opposite, requires real-time results. Since the price of a currency changes several times a day, you need to update the content accordingly.

Query that Deserves Freshness

A few years ago, the term used to describe this was "Query Deserves Freshness" (QDF). If a singular search phrase is a QDF, then Google will show up the most recent results. This situation often happens in specific markets, like news, current events, or game scores. In those cases, freshness and frequency are tied.

I was ready to end this post here, but I can anticipate someone screaming with this objection.

"But Google DOES like fresh content, and it will reward you with traffic."

I like this because there are many examples of pages that receive organic traffic for years with virtually zero changes. I like to use Ahrefs Content Explorer to check that. Of course, this well-intended but inaccurate statement seems to be the perfect justification to create a blog with a high frequency of publishing.

You always need fresh content (with the most updated information available). For SEO purposes, you don't need a high publishing frequency or a high rate of rebuilding content. Keep this idea in mind so that you won't get dragged into an endless content creation/optimization workflow.