After a client implemented their company blog this week, they asked how often they needed to update it. You know, they didn’t start their website to be a writer, and they didn’t plan of having to update their site weekly, daily, even monthly. So the VERY next question is: Why is Fresh Content Good for SEO?

I realized that the answer(s) are not obvious to many site owners. They’ve read that they have to do this. They have been told by their SEO company. They really don’t wanna. So WHY is it that they have to?

Several reasons come to mind. Of course, not even considering SEO perspective, having a company blog does add to a user experience and can potentially turn clicks into conversions. Potential Client gets to know you, Potential Client learns about how to choose a product, Potential Client realizes you are an expert in your field, etc.

But without the SEO value, some site owners could still skip the whole blog/fresh content bit, and still be successful. The SEO reasons I can think of are:

1. Frequent site updates encourage frequent indexing. You want Search Engines to visit your site often. When a search engine visits your site and finds nothing new over and over, they will visit less often. If they visit 1x a week, and there is new info, they will visit more than 1x a week. If they visit daily and there is always something new, they continue to visit daily. Remember a search engine wants to index the most recent relevant information to deliver to its readers, so it doesn’t want to miss out on anything you feed it.
2. Google values content. So SEOs do it. I personally am frustrated by this. I read SEOs going on about how much better your website will be with tons of content; become an authority on your topic; don’t build a blog for the search engines, build it for clients; the only way to rank is to be an authority; give people something worth linking to. This is definitely true, but what about the sites that just don’t lend themselves to unending content? What about someone that can say all they need to say about their wedding invitations in a handful of guides, how much more relevant news are we going to read about wedding invitations? Write about weddings, advice, tips they say—well why do I need to buy my wedding invitations from a wedding expert? I just want beautiful invites, and a good guide or two is plenty. Selection, customer service, and pricing are more important to me than scads of articles on weddings, or even than a guide. However, Google decided that more content is better, and so we do it. This is artificially manipulating a search engine just as much as link building if you ask me, but it’s what the search engines like, so you have to do it. Nuf said.
3. More content gives you more opportunity to tell Google what your pages is about. Continual fresh content will naturally be keyword rich and very very often some long-tail niche keywords will naturally occur in your text. The more chances search engines have to determine what the site is about, the better.
4. A recent article has a very good chance of ranking in the top 10 temporarily, especially a dated article as in an blog. Again, SEs want the latest news, so they will value a new item and potentially rank it higher.

So bite the bullet and find ways to add content to your sites. You do not need to go overboard, even 1 article a week is sufficient. I’ve shared some content ideas on a previous entry. Honestly it gets easier as you get used to it, and worst case you can always hire it out.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Tags: content is king, fresh content, seo tips

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 10:35 pm and is filed under Content, seo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.