SEO fix guide
Missing Publish or Update Date on Editorial Content
Editorial content lacks a visible publish or last-updated date. Search engines and users value content freshness signals.
Issue ID: ONPAGE-DATE-001
Severity: minor
Impact: Low
Effort: S
Use this article when
- You need deeper remediation guidance than the issue card can show.
- You want CMS-specific steps before handing the fix to a developer.
- You want a repeatable re-check path after shipping the change.
What this issue is
Editorial content lacks a visible publish or last-updated date. Search engines and users value content freshness signals.
Why it matters
Editorial content lacks a visible publish or last-updated date. Search engines and users value content freshness signals. This affects how clearly search engines understand the page and how persuasive it looks in search results.
How we detect it
- FreeSiteAudit flags this issue when the rule for ONPAGE-DATE-001 fails and the page evidence points to Dom body.
- You can usually confirm this by checking the page source or the relevant page settings inside your CMS.
Evidence examples
Check the affected page source, rendered output, or relevant CMS setting to confirm the missing or incorrect element.
How to fix it
- 1Add a visible publish date and last-updated date to articles
- 2Use datePublished and dateModified in Article schema
How to re-check it
- Confirm date is visible on editorial pages and in structured data
Related tools
This issue is best verified with the full FreeSiteAudit crawl rather than a single-point mini tool.