Fresh Web Content and SEO

Written by: Gary Horsman

Blog SEO

Fresh Web Content

How much fresh web content do you need for your website? This is a complicated question to answer as it depends on a number of factors. The proper answer also means that you need to have good information on your competitors as search engine positioning is significantly based on being better than the competition. This is always the case when it comes to SEO. You do not have to do things perfectly you just need to be better than your competition.

Here are some key questions to ask:

How much fresh web content do your top competitors produce?

You should monitor your key competitor. In this case define your competitor not as the competitor right down the street but rather which competitors are in the search position that you want to be in.

How often are there updates or events that focus on your industry?

You need to be on top of news on your industry. If your industry has weekly updates on key information or on events and you update your website once or twice a year then your website is not keeping pace with your industry. This will make your site appear to be static compared to your industry.

How often is fresh content included in the results for your keyword searches?

From time to time – based on the rate of updates within your industry – do a manual search using your important keyword phrases and see if the major search engines are including fresh content in the search results. If you see content that varies much more frequently than the frequency at which your create new content then again you could have a site that appears to be static,

How much quality content are you and your team/resources capable of creating?

After establishing the rate a which you think you should be creating new content ask yourself whether you and your team can match the rate of content creation necessary to be placed in a category where your site is considered as being fresh.

Researching the answers to these questions for your market will give you good understanding of the volume and frequency of content you need to produce to meet your search engine optimization goals as they relate to the search engines.

Always keeping your capabilities in mind you can estimate whether you need daily, weekly, or monthly updates to include in your search engine optimization plan and stay fresh in the eyes of both the search engines and your website visitors.

Even if your business does not have anything going on in any of the categories above, it is important to publish something new at least on a monthly basis, growing your site and visibility for your products and services and anchoring your search engine optimization efforts in great content.

Fresh content needs to be part of your search engine optimization planning.