Why Is Fresh Content So Important?

Your cat won’t let you set it and forget it with blogging.

Really good website content needs to be constantly updated. Search engines prefer fresh content, so if your goal is to “set it and forget it” with a few optimized articles on your site, you might as well throw in the towel when it comes to gaining organic search engine ranks. A blog, for example, is a great way to add regular content. User-generated content (such as blog comments, forum posts, user reviews, and testimonials) is a great way to keep things fresh.

Content for Conversion

Content plays a psychological role in converting visitors into customers. Overall website size matters to Google, too. If you search Google for site:lendingtree.com you will see a site with about 8,000 pages indexed. Do the same search on any local competitor that offers mortgages and you will likely see no more than 10–100 pages indexed. When vying for top ranks and top traffic, you can’t expect Google or customers to treat you with the same respect they give to sites with large amounts of content unless you have lots of great content of your own! That has to become your new mindset if you want to really win this SEO/Internet marketing game.

Marketing Companies Can’t Make Pigs Fly!

Your site is only as good as its content, and if the content is poor no amount of magic inbound marketing dust will help you get to the number one spot or become a legend in social circles. Ask yourself: If there was no such thing as the Internet and there were no brochures, what would your pitch be? What is the information that communicates your uniqueness? Try to ensure the things you do off-line and the pitch you give to people in person are replicated in a digital format.

It all starts with who you are and what you represent. Without this, all the geeky SEO tricks in the world won’t help you. If you don’t have an agency helping you understand your company’s positioning, you should work on defining your brand before writing a single tagline. Once you know your positioning—for example, are you a high-cost provider like a Ritz-Carlton hotel or a lower-cost provider like a Best Western—then you can clearly state your company’s unique selling proposition and back up the brand with key conversion points, including your content.

Writing for Personas

Knowing the personas of your website audience is critical to writing good content. If you write content with an image of one of your targeted personas in mind, the content is more likely to make an emotional connection with your target audience.

Photo credit: kattebelletje / Foter / CC BY-NC