Just about every website owner would love to receive more organic traffic from Google and other search engines. Unfortunately, many sites fall quite short of their potential in this respect, despite having a lot to offer.
One of the most common problems with otherwise well-designed websites is a lack of ongoing content creation. Even an informative website that never gets updated and expanded will eventually suffer setbacks in the battle for search engine results rankings.
Fortunately, it should never be necessary to accept that undesirable fate. Simply making sure that fresh content is regularly being added will always pay off, and there are four good reasons why.
Fresh Content Stands Out in a Vast Sea of Stagnation
There are nearly 1.7 billion websites online at the moment, many of which have not changed in years. Google and other search engines tend to prefer websites that are kept current through the addition of new content over time.
Thanks to the availability of WordPress website packages and the like that make this easy to arrange for, websites owners should never feel like they have to fall behind in this important respect. There are four straightforward reasons why websites that regularly publish fresh content tend to rank higher in the search results than their competitors:
- Continuing relevance. Websites that publish an initial wave of content and then turn off the switch inevitably fall behind the times. Even in relatively slow-moving industries, six months can leave much of the content on a site feeling quite outdated. A website that remains committed to regular content updates will be able to stay on top of the latest developments at all times. Whether that means posting stories that play off the latest news or something else entirely, that type of relevance is a powerful search engine optimization tool.
- Improved engagement. Google uses a variety of tactics to track how long its users spend browsing the websites they visit. When a visitor sticks around on a website to read more, Google takes that as an indication of the destination’s overall value. Websites that publish new content regularly tend to fare better than others in this increasingly important respect. Over time, that will mean earning much more organic traffic from search engines and other sources.
- Targeting new keywords. Publishing a new piece of content is an opportunity to stake a claim to some entirely new keywords. That could mean anything from going after a recently discovered long-tail gem or opting to fight for some highly competitive phrases. Either way, regularly putting new content online means having more opportunities to target keywords that could produce more traffic.
- Search engine signaling. Above all else, Google and other search engines see the regular publication of new content as a sign of a healthy, committed website. Publishing high-quality content consistently will help elevate all of a site’s pages in the search results rankings.
A Powerful SEO Tool That is Available to All
For these four reasons, at the very least, just about any website can see improved search results rankings by publishing fresh content regularly. While there are also other ways to produce such results, none are likely to pay off as consistently and impressively as putting new, interesting content online.