It is common knowledge that creating a regular flow of useful content for your blog will help engage users with your website.
This engagement will encourage users to share your content via social media and generate more links to your website, which in turn will boost your search engine rankings.
Google’s ranking algorithm is driven by over 200 signals with many relating to content quality and frequency. Here, we highlight the benefits of regularly updating your blog with fresh, unique and qualitative content:
1. More content = more pages indexed by Google
Google recently installed a feature called “Submit URL to Index” which allows you to submit a URL for Google to crawl “within a day”. This forces them to re-evaluate your site, which could improve your search engine ranking. For more information, click here.
If you use WordPress, it automatically pings Google to notify them and usually the content is indexed within a few minutes.
2. More content = more keywords
This is a tried and tested, extremely effective strategy. The more you write about a specific topic, the more keywords for that niche you will have on your site. Using supplementary relevant and specific keywords will help your website rank higher for targeted search terms.
Another tip is to write about topics that relate to your primary focus. This widens your scope of potential customers who are interested in your website.
3. Google favours sites that update their content on a regular basis
This is very important: Google regards new content as the most relevant to users and will rank new pages ahead of old content. Therefore creating good quality content on a regular basis will give your site more kudos in the eyes of the big G. If you slack, you will be sure to lose search engine visibility.
4. Posting regular, relevant content via social media develops an engaged community
Why do consumers follow brands and blogs? They do it because they are interested in what you have to say. By creating regular content that is interesting to you readers, more of your target audience will engage with you. The more often you do this, the more likely you are to develop a highly engaged social media audience. It’s clear that social signals do have a positive impact on search engine results so there is an added benefit when developing a successful solid social media strategy.
5. Keeping your target audience informed = more brand awareness, links, traffic and sales.
If your last post was in May 2011, what has your business actually been up to? Visitors could be forgiven in thinking that you may have gone out of business. Regular communication makes followers feel connected to your brand and they are less likely to forget that you exist. People like to hear stories told in an exciting way. Whether you are looking to engage with a consumer audience or B2B you should be creating content that has an impact.
Updating your website’s content regularly is the best way to develop your brand online. The only obstacle involved is the amount of time that is consumed in creating content: but if you don’t have time to build your website and keep it regularly updated, why is it there at all?