Is it OK to change the page text for SEO?
One of the questions that we get alot is: "Is it OK to change the text of this page for SEO?" There are concerns around this, as changing the text can cause unintended consequences.
What is the main point of changing the text on the page?
Usually, businesses have pages of evergreen content. Their products that they sell or their services usually do not change very often and they do want those to rank very well. Over time, competitors may also start to rank well on the search engines for the same keyphrase your content is optimized towards, and your page may start to slip down. To stay competitive, should you be changing the content on the page? The answer is YES - but hold on. There are two different methods that you can use.
You can change the content on the page
This option here will keep your current URL structure. For example:
example.com/service1
This is great for content refreshes and if you have alot of links already pointing to that URL. Maybe you just wanted to restructure the way your paragraphs are, but the general theme is the same for that page. Adding additional content and changing the content up to be more up-to-date is great for this option.
You can build another page and then redirect the old page to that new page
If there is going to be a massive change in SEO strategy for the product or service, it would be a good idea to build out a new page with a new URL and then redirect the traffic from the old URL to the new URL (page). For example:
example.com/service1 -> example.com/SEO-URL
This new page will be optimized around a new set of keyphrases and the URL will change. This can be great for new products that are replacing old products or if you no longer wish to try to rank for a specific phrase any more and want to target new phrases.
What are the hazards of changing content on the page for SEO?
The main hazard would be that your lose your rankings. With an improper take on SEO, you could lose more search result rank than what you currently have. Of course, if you do it right you will start to move up the rankings or start ranking for the new terms that you would like to have.