What is Fresh Content?
Fresh content would be a page that’s been recently updated, people
have argued there needs to be enough changes to make a page fresh, but
in essence make some content changes and Google etc… is meant to give
that page a boost for being fresh (updated).
If the people who state as a fact that fresh content is ranked
higher by the search engines then by varying your titles, alt
attributes, headers along the lines of this:
Google Fresh Content
Google Prefers Fresh Content
Fresh Content = Great SERPs
Search Engines Prefer Fresh Content
Fresh Content and Google the Truth
Google Fresh Content = SEO Myth
You get the idea, basically make a bunch of related phrases that are
randomised every time a page is visited (not hard to do with a PHP
driven site for example).
This should generate a fresh page in the eyes of the search engines
ranking algorithms. So every time Google visits a page like this it
will think it’s been updated with new fresh content and give it a boost
for being so lemon fresh 
Unfortunately, there’s one enormous flaw in this so called “SEO
fact”, most stuff you find on SEO forums is a bunch of made up tosh
based on circumstantial evidence at best (no real evidence to back it
up) and search engines preferring fresh content over never changing
content is one of those widely believed SEO myths.
SEO Myth – Fresh Content = Higher Google Rankings
Poorly informed webmasters come to conclusions like this in the following way.
Had this page for ages and not updated for years, doing OK in
Google, but not great. Revamped the page and Google gave it better
SERPs almost over night and sends it more traffic, whooh Google prefers
recently updated content (fresh content) over old static content.
Everybody should update their old pages for better SERPs.
Reality check: this doesn’t occur every time a page
is updated, sometimes a change will result in SERPs drops (less
traffic). Real reason for the SERPs improvement is either coincidence
(maybe new links finally kicked in, Google changed it’s ranking algo
etc….) or the new content is better optimised and so does better in the
search engines due to being better optimised content. A person who
frequents and posts on SEO forums etc… wouldn’t deliberately update a
page with poorly optimised content and so when a webmaster like this
changes an old page there’s a very good chance it’s going to be better
optimised afterwards.
This also explains why changes don’t always result in SEO
improvements, some changes aren’t always an SEO improvement (a lot of
bad SEO information out there!).
Fresh Content Per Se Does NOT = Better SERPs
Better Optimised Content = Better SERPs
Since there is no SEO benefit to having ever changing fresh content
on an existing page, varying your content just to make it fresh could
be a very bad idea. If a page is targeting one set of SERPs (like “Does
Google Prefer Fresh Content?” and it’s derivatives) then the best title
for it is the actual SERP plus whatever words to make it appealing to
potential visitors (in this case something like “Does Google Prefer
Fresh Content?”).
Yes you can probably make some small changes to a page that won’t
impact it’s SERPs, but make the wrong changes and your going to have a
negative impact on that pages SERPs and from my perspective it’s better
to aim for one highly optimised page to using less optimised phrases in
key areas of content in the misguided hope Google likes recently
updated content.
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