Get Fresh and Stay Fresh
Suppose the only thing available when you flipped on the TV (or your streaming app) to watch your favorite show was reruns from last season. There should be some new shows! Where are they? you would shout at the screen.
And even if that previous season was a great one, after a while, you’d probably be inclined to give up on that show and that channel. I’ve always been a Seinfeld fan, but if all I had available was the 1997-98 season, that fondness would fade.
That’s pretty much how your website visitors feel when they come to your website and it looks the same as it did last week. Or last month. Or six months ago.
This is why it is so important to freshen up the content on your site. We’re not talking about a website redesign or a complete makeover every few months, just that you need to make sure that there is new material there. And that you promote that new content, through messages on the site and in the way pages are presented.
You should add new blog posts at least once every week or two (more often is better), and it should be quality content, not just self-promotion. Add some videos. Throw in some photos of your happy employees serving the community or working a trade show. Post some infographics that help to educate and enlighten your site visitors. Post news releases, even if the news isn’t earth-shaking.
All this works together to make visiting your site a pleasant experience, not a chore.
We’ve talked about this before, but it came to mind with some new client work that we’re doing with a couple of companies in revamping their website content as part of redesign efforts. We’re trying to make the point to them that once the site launches, it can only sit there and look pretty for so long. Otherwise, its freshness wilts.
We are not advising this so we can get steady writing work. We’re already pretty busy. But if they want their websites to serve them well – not only in how they present these companies as thought leaders but from the search engine angle – they need to churn that content.
Tags and keywords just don’t do the job anymore when it comes to search results. Freshness has become a big factor in how well a site scores in that regard.
So freshness is a winning strategy for two reasons: The site does better in searches, and when that searching visitor arrives, they’ll find compelling content and good reasons to visit again.