Rewrite or Modify

When it comes to updating pages there is a choice between rewriting (re-creating) the page from the latest template or to add the modifications to the existing page.

There are advantages to re-creating the page as it both tests the new template and it gives you the chanch to make changes to make the page more readable and give new information for the search engines to digest. Pages that get Imp impressions in GSC but fail to get many Clicks are good candidates.

A good example is the Chrome Pre-Fetch Private Proxy. Here there are obvious searches from those looking to see why they are seeing robots looking for file/directory .well-known/traffic-advice. Providing the links to StackExchange and the Chrome Developers blog will only encourage visitors never to return.

The call on whether a page is re-written or modified depends on how much has to be modified. If the page has had the shim links removed and other minor changes to the template already made (such as the removal of the "header" section that was for an older mobile rendering) then the page can be just modified.

When there are many outbound links the page really needs to be re-written to add the hidden links.