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Send it straight to your assistant and get the short version first. The link travels with the prompt, so the model reads the real page.
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The short answer
Publishing weekly does not buy visibility. Removing three wrong facts often does. Updating helps because it eliminates the contradictions that make you risky to cite.
What updating actually fixes
Outdated service lists. Old pricing. Changed hours. Staff who left. Certifications that lapsed. A service area that grew. Each one is a fact that now disagrees with something else about you, and disagreement is what makes you risky to assert.
- Services you no longer offer, still listed
- A licence class you upgraded, still showing the old one
- An address you moved from, still on two directories
- Project photos from a scope you have exited
- A phone number that reaches a line you stopped answering
Freshness is a tiebreaker
Between two equally clear, equally corroborated sources, the more recently updated one has an edge. That is a small effect and it is nothing like the effect of being the only clear source in your trade in your city.
Publishing weekly to signal freshness while leaving four contradictions in place is spending effort on the tiebreaker while losing the main event.
The highest-value update takes an afternoon
- Open your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and your top two directories side by side.
- Compare: business name, address, phone, hours, services, service area, licence.
- Write down every difference. There will be more than you expect.
- Fix them all to one agreed version.
- Then stop, and do not change anything else for ninety days.
Then leave it alone and measure
Change, wait, re-measure with the identical method. Changing continuously feels productive and guarantees you will never know which change did anything.
Most sites do not need more content. They need fewer disagreements.Jonathan Sterritt
What to update, and in what order
Not everything on a website decays at the same rate. Some facts rot quickly and cost you the moment they do. Others are cosmetic and can wait years. Working the list in the wrong order is how contractors spend a quarter redesigning a page nobody was misreading.
| Decays fast, fix first | Decays slowly, fix later |
|---|---|
| Services offered and dropped | Photography and page design |
| Service areas as the crew grows | Team bios |
| Licence class and insurance details | Blog posts about industry trends |
| Pricing bands and typical timelines | Testimonial layout |
| Phone, address, hours | Colour palette |
Everything in the left column is a factual claim that another surface can now contradict. Everything in the right column is presentation. Machines read the left column and largely ignore the right, which is the reverse of where most redesign budgets go.
Questions builders actually ask
How often should I update my site?
Reconcile facts whenever the business changes. Publish new explanatory content on whatever cadence you can keep accurate. Those are different rhythms.
Does changing dates on old posts help?
Not if nothing else changed. It is a cosmetic signal and it damages trust if a reader notices.
Should I delete old posts?
Delete or update anything factually wrong. Thin but accurate content is a low priority. Wrong content is a live liability.
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