So you’ve launched a responsive website, established a healthy email list and created a presence for your brand across various social media channels—now what? It is important that, once you generate a solid arsenal of digital assets, you do not just sit back and let them exist while expecting results. You won’t get the results you want via passivity. Being that the internet is on and active 24 hours a day, seven days a week, your digital presence should be living and breathing right along with it. That’s why posting fresh content for SEO is essential.

What do we mean by “fresh content?” This simply means posting new or updated content to your website on a regular basis.  Posting fresh content for SEO matters because Google uses the “freshness” of your pages as a factor in its algorithm to determine search engine rankings.

There are different degrees of maintaining fresh content, which does not necessarily mean you have to post new content every day. In fact, there are multitudes of pages that have not been updated in years that continuously rank high in search simply because their domain names have remained active—and the domains are seen as providing the most relevant information on a topic. However, getting in the habit of posting fresh content on a regular basis is certainly an effective way to maximize your ranking. Here are a few other reasons why posting fresh content for SEO is critical to cultivating a strong digital presence.

• It leads to frequent indexing. The more frequently you update your website by posting articles, blogs, new pages, etc., the more often search engines will make it a point to crawl your website—which can lead you to achieve higher rankings. Web crawlers (bots) scan the internet for websites and indexes them based on a number of factors included in a specific algorithm. One of those factors in the algorithm is how often a website is updated. Every time you update your website, your site will be crawled and will adjust its ranking accordingly.
• It allows you to use more keywords. Keywords are another factor that search engines take highly into account when ranking. When you post new content, it is essentially an opportunity to introduce new keywords onto your website. For example, if you post a fresh blog to your site three times a week, then each blog post gives you a chance to optimize that post with relevant keywords that will drive internet users to your site. If you maintain a real estate blog and make a post about fall landscaping trends, then you could use the phrase “fall landscaping trends” as a valuable keyword. Read more about crafting keywords in blog writing.
• It paints you as a valuable industry resource. The more informative and relevant content you post, the better the chance you will have with Google and other search engines to secure a top spot in the rankings—and stay there. Google recognizes these “authority sites,” as ones worthy of high positioning. They get indexed frequently, and they become go-to’s for users looking for answers on a particular topic or category of topics. The way to do this is to post fresh, valuable content on a consistent basis.
• It will make Google happy. Speaking of authority, Google has it in the world of search engines, so having your website look good to Google should be your overarching goal. Google likes frequently updated sites, which are ones that are updated once a day or at least two to three times a week. When Googlebots crawl the internet, they are looking for sites that are frequently updated, and they reward them with higher rankings in search. Again, this does not mean that you need to make an exorbitant amount of unnecessary changes to your site multiple times a day every day to please Google. Make sure the nature of your updates include quality content—and make them a few times a week to get on Google’s good side.
• It will keep your visitors engaged. Search engine rankings aside, posting fresh content benefits you simply because it will make internet users—a.k.a., potential customers—want to visit your site and return to it to consume the valuable content you post. Keeping your site visitors engaged leads to them becoming loyal fans of your site and brand—and sharing it with their friends. Not only can your site display fresh content about blog topics relevant to your industry, but it is also a way to keep customers updated on what’s going on within your business and with your products and services. People are less likely to trust a website that appears inactive, which can indicate a lack of effort or concern for customers’ well-being on your part.

Posting fresh content for SEO is critical to having your site pages achieve significant ranking. It’s also necessary to secure a solid following of site visitors that will support your brand and encourage others to do the same.

Check back for next week’s blog, in which we will discuss ideas for how you can post fresh content to your website. Need help with or don’t have the time to keep your site updated with fresh content? Let the McNutt & Partners team do it for you! Call us today at 334-521-1010 or visit our contact page.