People are constantly editing their existing web pages, even the main home pages and category top pages. Because of the way the web works, this practice is particularly unwise. Let's think it through.
Why we edit our popular pages
1) Sometimes they need editing.
2) We didn't spell the titles or headings right.
3) We didn't pick the most popular keyword phrases
4) We didn't put them early enough in the content
5) Sometimes we're just bored with the old look and want something different. Something new.
Of these reasons, the only one that really should motivate you to edit a popular page is the correction of spelling or grammatical mistakes. Google and the other bots don't like bad spelling. Oh shure (see?) some badly spelled words may attract people who also make the same error in their searches.
However, Google will actually notice that the page uses lots of badly spelled words, and give it less pagerank. If you correct bad spelling, your rank will usually improve. This especially applies to the important TITLE and H1 or H2 tags, plus the first 100 or 200 words of content.
You should correct any spelling errors in any of your pages, especially the popular ones.
Now, should you change the page contents for any of the other reasons? Perhaps.
On a sliding scale, if you think you want to move a keyword phrase to an earlier position in the title, do it. If you are adding a new keyword, usually you should NOT do it. Adding keywords will change the apparent subject of the page. Exceptions might be changing from a less popular to a more popular version of what is otherwise the same keyword, essentially.
I.E. -- You may be using "anti-inflammation" when you've found out that "anti-inflammatory" is used by about 10-times more people to search for the same things. Interesting, huh? I'd switch the 2. I'd add the more popular phrase early in the TITLE and then use the old less popular phrase later in the title.
OLD TITLE
"The Anti-Inflammation Diet: 6 Ways to lose weight"
NEW TITLE
"The Anti-Inflammatory Diet: 6 anti-inflammation tips to lose weight"
In this example, we should be getting good relevancy scores for BOTH phrases. If we make similar changes down the page in our subheadings and topical paragraphs, using both phrases, we should gain ranking and traffic.
Remember that you also need to make similar changes or additions to your backlink network. You need to setup new backlinks, or edit the old ones where you can so that they also reflect both terms.
Together, these techniques should IMPROVE your traffic and relevancy.
WHAT NOT TO DO
Don't add irrelevant terms to your page elements, title and headings... even if they are very popular.
The old example is adding terms like "naked", "sexy", "xxx" to your page. We all know that they are very popular. But unless people are likely to be searching for "sexy anti-inflammatory diet help", your use of such phrases will get you decreased traffic and rankings.
Don't be irrelevant. No matter how "sexy" the terms might be, they are not going to increase your traffic. And they will likely hurt it.
Don't re-do your page contents just because you're bored with it.
There are hundreds of millions of people who have never read your content, even though it is so old it's growing a beard.
Old content is "trusted" and will have backlinks pointing to it from people who liked it. Don't throw that away.
If you're bored, just create new pages. It's that simple.
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Contributor's Note
You can read an expanded discussion of this & related SEO and web-site promotion topics at IdeaPro.com, our 12 year old site devoted to internet marketing.
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