The Importance of Fresh Content on Your Website

The Importance of Fresh Content on Your Website

Big Ideas

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November 12 2019
Big Ideas
Author: Amol Samra

On average, Google processes 40,000 search queries every second totalling to a whooping 3.5 billion each day. While data consumption is at an all-time high, the amount of content produced is much higher. Approximately 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is produced daily, and this figure continues to increase by leaps and bounds owing to new technological advancements.

These numbers point towards the importance of fresh content in today’s technology-driven and digital world. With this magnitude of data, information gets stale quicker than Usain Bolt completes a 100-metre sprint.

Businesses need to cut through the noise using tools such as: videos, infographics, GIF’s, images and blogs to get noticed. The absolute last thing that sells in these “data mayhem days” is stale content.

According to Nielsen’s Total Audience Report, the average American adult spends 10.5 hours with media per day.

"To stand out, many brands are embracing people-based marketing practices to ensure they are delivering tailored, personally relevant messages, content and offers at each stage of the consumer journey."

 

WHY IS FRESH CONTENT ON YOUR SITE IMPORTANT?

Google’s Recency Bias

The search engine king, Google, uses a variety of algorithms to provide searchers with the most relevant and recent information. The Googlebot using these algorithms crawls around the web to index new sites and webpages. This applies to both paid and organic content. Each update having reliable information (unnecessary updates don’t count) alerts Googlebot to index pages.

User demand, coupled with the relevance and recency of your content, is what leads to frequent indexing. It doesn’t necessarily result in higher rankings but makes websites noticeable to Google. When brands post and share trending and quality content on websites and linked platforms, Google re-evaluates their site ranking. This eventually leads to higher indexing and visibility.

Updating content from posts with the highest traffic is the first step in repurposing and refreshing content. Other webpages and social media embedded feeds also require regular content upgrades.

Below, you’ll notice an infographic with Google’s governing principles. These principles help their algorithms sort through your content.

Google Governing Guiding Principles

 

SEO

Updated websites benefit by keeping audiences informed and improving site discoverability. Website visitors play an important role in search engine rankings—by curating and sharing content on trending topics or an issue that’s driving internet engagement through the roof—brands can increase their chances of being seen.

Evergreen content

Fresh content optimizes sites due to the increased use of keywords. These keywords, when built in organically and naturally into the piece, lead to higher SEO. This is because Google algorithms give priority to keywords during site indexing and page ranking.

When we say organically built in, we mean sprinkling limited and specific keywords throughout the piece. Keywords are the way to go, but moderation is key. A good rule of thumb for keywords is one for every 100 words. Stuffing content with excess keywords ends up backfiring. At the end of the day, quality is important over quantity when it comes to keywords.

Excess Keywords ≠ Higher SEO

Preparing for the Alpha’s

Marketers and brands need to buckle up to cater to the digital natives—Generation Z’s and Alpha’s—who were born with information at their fingertips. The first-borns of Generation Alpha were emerged when the first iPad was launched. Though this generation is still pint-sized, their craving for content and data consumption will be the highest of all previous generations.

Businesses need to augment their content creation and curation abilities to fit with data consumption patterns and expectations. Since there are so many things on the internet, the challenge now is to grab attention and be a part of larger conversations. Not providing recent and interactive content isn’t even an option if a company wants to conduct business. This certainly cannot be achieved through a blog post you wrote five-years ago. It’s important to keep pace with what’s happening online. While it might seem impossible, there are tools and software like PARKER and Sprout Social which simplify content curation and creation.

Keeping your website up to date with educational, industry-specific, and quality content is key. This can be achieved by embedding and integrating social media and curation tools with the website.

Building Trust

Adding value through unique products is no longer the only selling point for businesses. They need to add value through up-to-date content that fulfills consumers’ compulsive need to know more and to engage.

Brand reputation and trust are of prime importance to users especially the younger generations. The iGen doesn’t want self proclaimed chatter about how great your product is; they are inquisitive problem solvers who turn to Google rather than to humans. They are avid learners.

According to the study The State of Gen Z™ from 2017:

“85% of Gen Z watched at least one online video in the past week to learn a new skill.”​

What people want is conversations, not from call centre’s, but from avenues like social, websites and in-person. When brands care to indulge in conversations and stand up for current issues that matter to their audiences, that builds brand loyalty. Timeliness is imperative.

Nike’s ad featuring Colin Kaepernick wouldn’t have garnered such massive engagement had it been launched a month later.  It landed right before the NFL’s new season was kicking off which was no coincidence; taking timing into account made Nike’s campaign more effective. This just reiterates the importance of keeping your content current and on trend.  

7 KEY TAKEAWAYS

  1. Create fresh content 
  2. Make your content creation as frictionless as possible
  3. Place importance on timeliness
  4. Embed many of your channels into your website; still vary what your saying where and when
  5. Invest in content management
  6. Utilize Meta-tags and keywords
  7. Build audience trust​

CONCLUSION

The content marketing industry is expected to reach $41​3 billion by 2021. Now’s the time to revisit your content strategy or formulate one.

Brands who think they can survive this trend might as well operate under a rock. It’s best to sail with the digital and data driven tides.

If you want help with your content on your site, please reach out. To find out more about PARKER - a dynamic content hub that brings fresh content from your multiple trusted sources to your website, simply and quickly - visit parkerhub.online.​

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