Fresh Content Matters

Published on 3 Jun 2013 at 8:52 pm.
Filed under Informative,Search Engine Optimization,Web Design,writing.

Haven’t touched your website in a long time? Add fresh content and consider a new design to boost your site’s ranking in search engines.

Why do we need fresh content?

Fresh content has a better change of being useful to someone doing a search. Suppose you were looking for a new car for your family and found two articles dedicated to the Safest Cars in America. The article from 2013 is up to date and thus more useful than the article from 2004. This is why freshness is a logical way for search engines to decide the most relevant page for a search query.

Does the amount or frequency of content change matter?

Yes. Changing a single line of text on a page isn’t much of a change. It’s very rare that this change will affect your ranking in a noticeable way. Similarly, the more often you content changes the fresher the site feels over all. By making frequent changes to an individual page you are increasing that page’s likelihood to come up in searches. By adding new content you are increasing the likelihood for your overall site to appear in searches.

Will fresh content rank better?

Usually it will, but this is not a given. Usually the page receives a boost because the author now knows more about the subject. This author is now creating content that is better optimized for users. This means rewriting the content to add keywords that a person might actually look for. It can also mean the content is more visually appealing.

Will a new design help?

Ideally it will. During the redesign process you should look over your content and decide what you really want to highlight. You will end up generating fresh content organically by highlighting your most important content.

This post was originally published as Fresh Content Matters for Brand Builder Websites.