A website is to your online business is as brick and mortar shop front is to your offline business. It is one of the most integral components of your online success. Leaving a lasting impression on the visitors who land on your page is the main goal but there are many strategies for making this a reality. Employing the wrong strategies can have a very negative effect on your business. If your website does not exude professionalism, credibility, and great quality, customers may be scared away. 75% of your web visitors will judge your credibility based on web design.

Your website is a living, breathing entity on the internet. Every update you make to your website once it is “live” on the internet plays a part in its interaction with visitors, customers, and the powerful search engines. However, a static website without updates of any kind may be viewed by search engines as a “dead” entity – with no life and nothing new to offer. Thankfully, your frequently updated website offers search engines a haven for fresh content and sources of new information for their search requests. Simply put, if you update your website often with high-quality content, search engines will love you for it. What are the other reasons it is important for your website to update frequently with fresh content?

Don’t confuse this phrase with the thinking that fresh content will give you higher indexing. That may not be the case. However, the more frequently you update your website with articles, downloads, and new web pages, the more frequently a search engine will stop by to visit your website. When search engines look at your site more frequently, you have the opportunity to achieve higher rankings based on the content you provide. Search engines use web crawlers (a.k.a robots, bots, or “Googlebots”), which are simply high-tech programs that scan the internet for websites. The web crawler “indexes” a site based upon a number of algorithmic factors determined by the search engine company. For instance, a site may be indexed based upon a combination of the number of incoming links to the site, the number and type of subject keywords used, and how often a site is updated. Every time you make an update to your website, the search engine takes notice and re-arranges your site’s ranking. Thus, if you want to increase the chances of your website getting a higher ranking, update the content frequently so that a search engine will reassess your position on its index. Keep in mind, more content is not the key here, quality is. So, yes, it is a good idea to update frequently, but keep your content standards high. If you blast your page with a ton of low-quality articles stuffed with keywords, you are going to be penalized.

By far, the most frequently used search engine is Google. As the king of all search engines, Google has tremendous influence on webmasters and how websites are constructed. When Google expresses its love for websites that update frequently, this is a sure sign that you should add fresh content to your website as often as you can.​ Of course, you should not make unnecessary changes, additions, or postings every hour of every day. However, a site that is updated once a day, or at least two to three times a week, is considered a frequently updated site. The “Googlebot” that crawls the web is constantly searching for web pages that are new or updated and then adds the fresh content to the Google index. If you update your content often with reliable and valuable information, then you have a better chance of Google ranking your site higher with each update. So, add an article, an image or just make some change on your site to get noticed. The easiest and most effective way to stay fresh is to add a blog on your site and continue to add articles that will get noticed by your viewers. If they comment on those articles, that counts as an update on your site. So, write something that will get the attention to begin helping with your frequent updates.

When you publish new content, you present yet more opportunities for your site to contain more keywords. Keywords are high on the algorithm chart for search engine indexing and ranking. Frequently added content, such as blog or article postings, allows you to optimize the article with pertinent keywords that can attract visitors to your site. For instance, if you run an insurance quote website and update four to five times a week with new articles, you can focus each article on a different aspect of insurance, such as “automobile liability insurance” or “universal life insurance.” Each time you add a new article, you incorporate valuable keywords that help a search engine recognize your website as a place searchers can visit for their specific insurance needs. Now, you have to remember that with the algorithm updates, Google does not base a ton of weight on how many keywords your website has. Google is looking at top quality content, rather than keyword-stuffed crap content when it indexes a site. Yes, keywords are still a part of your SEO strategy, but you cannot build your entire SEO campaign around a keyword or keyword phrase no longer. Instead, create quality content that yes, has your keywords within it, but only if they are naturally in place. In other words, write content that answers a question, explains how to do something for the reader or provides quality information that they want. Do not write content around a keyword; write it around what the reader wants. Use your Meta tags, title tags and descriptions for your keywords, but leave the content in a more natural state.

All webmasters strive to become the industry “authority” in Google’s eyes. The predominant strategy to becoming an authority site is by abiding by the SEO adage, “content is king.” The more informative, valuable content you can publish that pertains to your industry, the greater authority potential your website enjoys. In addition, if you review your competitors’ websites, you will quickly find that the authority sites in your industry have tens of thousands of pages indexed by Google, who also measures relevance by site saturation. The more valuable content you publish, the better your chances of becoming an authority site. Furthering this endeavor, frequently publishing industry news updates is another solid strategy in becoming an authority site. Each time you update your website with a news story, another page is created and indexed by Google. The more you write on a particular topic, as long as the content is great, you become a stronger authority and people begin to trust what you say. The more they trust you, the more likely they are to purchase from you. Social media platforms are a great place to begin building authority on a topic. Answering questions on forums, posting valuable in-depth articles on your blog or just commenting something worthwhile on other’s blogs can build your reputation and gain you the authority you need in your industry. If you consistently write top quality content, users will become loyal. Loyalty is something you cannot buy, so even the small business owners have a chance to compete with the big dogs of their industry.

Another good reason to update your website with valuable content is to keep current subscribers updated, as well as provide necessary information for new visitors to convert to customers. You could utilize a RSS feed that will update subscribers each time you publish fresh content to the website. By keeping your audience engaged, you develop long-term loyalty, which translates into returning traffic that adds tremendous value to your website. Likewise, your continually fresh content can provide new visitors with valuable information about your small business and your products or services. If a visitor was led to your site through a search engine link, then you need to convince them that your product is the best choice for them compared to the thousands (or millions!) of other results presented in their search. Give them articles about customer satisfaction. Inform them on the benefits of your product. Help them understand why they need your product. The more information a potential customer can access, the more likely he or she will be able to make an informed decision to purchase. Regularly updating your website with fresh content will not only garner appreciation and loyalty from your visitors, but will put you in good standings with the powerful Google. If a visitor finds your site and begins reading through your content and finds it is outdated, do you think they will stay or go? What would you do? I certainly would not order anything from someone who had an article from 2011 on their main page. I want to know the business is active, alive, worthy.