Google rankings can make or break your online presence. While not necessary to be the number one result for each and every keyword, it is necessary to show up on the first page of results that are typed into that search bar. Defined as organic traffic, Google ranks your page's "worthiness" based on a number of different factors including quality of content, traffic, domain authority, and freshness.

Understanding Freshness

Freshness is the indicator of how often your page updates. This factor lets untended pages slide down the list as their information falls out of date, and allows new and up to date pages rank towards the top of search results. Since it isn't practical to update an entire website every couple months, freshness must be determined by other factors on your page. 

Search Engine Watch explains some factors that Google uses to determine your page's relevance: 

  • Recent Events - do you have any activities this month or next month?
  • Hot Topics - are you relevant on the latest news, weather, or tech?
  • Recurring Events - do you have the stability of hosting regular events?
  • Frequent Updates - does content on your page change regularly?

While events and hot topics are areas that can be difficult for some businesses, frequent updates are available to all business no matter what you sell. In order to achieve frequent updates, savvy business owners turn to content marketing, creating short and long form content to achieve these updates.

The Value of Fresh Content

SEO experts at Moz recommend making a plan to update your site content in a consistent manner that benefits users. By continuing to add quality content, you can use this opportunity to provide a service to your users. If you sell gutters and downspouts, create an ebook that discusses cleaning, maintenance, and environmentally friendly ideas for wastewater. If your business sells cloud storage, create an infographic to explain how the cloud works and follow up with a series of blog posts discussing user experiences and how real people use the cloud. You can get the benefit of becoming an authoritative source in your industry by providing trusted web resources, while also improving your search ranking score.

Another benefit of content marketing involves the insights you'll gain. Since you have multiple pieces of content publishing, you'll be able to see the similarities and differences in how these pieces perform. Perhaps articles targeted at 30 something grad school moms yield a high sales conversion, but articles targeted at 40 something moms show little result. 

It's clear that fresh content matters, so the next step you need is to create your content creation plan, a content calendar and channel plan specific to your business. More on that to come soon.

Nikki Madison

Written by Nikki Madison