Freeze the Post Modification Date in SEOPress

What it does

SEOPress lets you freeze the modification date of any post, page, or custom post type when you save it. Normally, WordPress updates the “modified” timestamp every time you save an edit. When you freeze it, that date stays where it was, no matter how many times you save.

Why it matters

Your modification date shows up in several places search engines read: your XML sitemaps, the article:modified_time meta tag, and og:updated_time. If you fix a typo or tweak a sentence, you probably do not want Google to treat that as a fresh update. Google advises against bumping dates for minor changes, and freezing the date also avoids wasting crawl budget on edits that do not really change the content.

Keep the date live when you make a real, meaningful update. Freeze it when the edit is cosmetic.

How to use it

1. Open the post, page, or custom post type you want to edit
2. Open SEO metabox
3. Click the Advanced tab
4. Enable the option to freeze the modification date
5. Update the post content

The setting is per post, so you decide case by case. The original modification date stays in place on every save that follows.

Set a custom post modification date

1. Open the SEO metabox
2. Click the Advanced tab
3. Set a custom date using the date picker
4. Save the post content

Freeze all post modification dates by default

1. Go to the SEO, Advanced settings page
2. Click the Advanced tab
3. Check “Freeze the last modified date for all posts by default”