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Refreshing Website Content

Stale websites deter visitors, but equally so do sites that change too often.  Where is the balance to be achieved?

Keeping your website fresh for Google ... and visitors too!

You probably spent a lot of time in the original design and content creation of your website to optimise the balance between human readability and Google’s demands for better ranking.  But unless you regularly change the content you could now be losing those valuable search engine ranking ‘points’.

Why?  Well, one of the many factors that Google uses to rank web pages is the frequency and amount of changes.  Whilst the exact formula for page ranking is a closely guarded secret, Google’s logic here is simple – if you aren’t changing your pages very much or very often then you are probably not as good a destination for the searcher as a website that is.

Clearly you need to be revising pages and adding new pages to your site to show Google that you are current with your topic and a worthy destination for searchers. 

But be warned that you can overdo it.  If you change too much too often Google might suspect you of either changing the relevance of the site (with another topic area now becoming dominant) or of being hijacked/corrupted in some way.

In one of Google’s US Patents (number 20070143345) they state,

"A significant change over time in the set of topics associated with a document may indicate that the document has changed owners and previous document indicators, such as score, anchor text, etc., are no longer reliable.  Similarly, a spike in the number of topics could indicate spam.  For example, if a particular document is associated with a set of one or more topics over what may be considered a 'stable' period of time and then a (sudden) spike occurs in the number of topics associated with the document, this may be an indication that the document has been taken over as a 'doorway' document.  Another indication may include the disappearance of the original topics associated with the document. If one or more of these situations are detected, then Google may reduce the relative score of such documents and/or the links, anchor text, or other data associated the document."

Keep it 'honest'

So, what is the best way to keep the website fresh without risking Google’s concern?

The answer is the same as with how to develop the best site in the first place – and that is to keep your content ‘honest’.  By that, we mean keep focused on your site’s visitors what they genuinely value as useful information.  Where there is real new information available then add it to your site, but to continuously make contrived changes just to satisfy Google will lead to a diminished user experience for your visitors – who will ‘vote with their mice’ and go elsewhere on the web.

Within any website there are subject areas that are typically very static in nature, such as long-standing product that doesn’t change, contact us information and so on.  And visitors wouldn’t be pleased if you change those pages around every other month just to satisfy Google.  Similarly a wholesale change of your home page may put off more regular visitors than it attracts new ones.

Where is frequent change a good thing?

Luckily there are also areas in a website that visitors naturally expect to be more volatile and these can be the focus of your change planning without ‘upsetting’ the structure of the static areas.  These areas would include:

• News Releases – even if you don’t actually ‘release’ them to the press, creating news releases for significant events/announcements will interest visitors and show that your site is current
• Blogging – creating a blog is an easy way to generate new content as well as solicit visitor feedback (which is also new content).  It must of course be focused and relevant to the site, and it can contain personal entries/topics if the nature of your visitor relations allows.
• Still Photography – new content needn’t always be text based.  Adding an image gallery and regularly putting up new pictures can generate good visitor interest.  And like the blog, you could solicit interaction from your customers with, maybe, pictures of them using your products.
• Video – with the advent of cheap digital video cameras and services like YouTube for publishing, you can add video content to your website much more easily than ever before.  However, the usual rules of quality and relevance apply otherwise visitors just won’t watch them.
• Special Offers – these can be a great way to change Home Page content as well as create new content within the website.  Remember, that added value offers (such as buy this and get that at half price) are just as powerful visitor incentives as straightforward price discounts.
• Customer Stories/Spotlights – publishing information about your customers and how they use your products/services not only generates good, relevant content it also creates a more positive bond with those customers.

Planning, planning, planning

As with any business task, if you plan ahead for your time allocation then you’re much more likely to get it done and with minimum stress.

Making website changes a fixed part of your weekly/monthly routine will help you keep the focus as well as assist you in ‘noticing’ things during the working day that would make good site content.

And like being on a diet, don’t check progress on a daily basis as you’ll end up disappointed.  Do check your website traffic statistics periodically (Google Analytics is free and very good if you don’t already have a way to do this) and look for general trends rather than short spikes/troughs, but don’t check them daily. 

You can back this information up by asking customers/visitors for their feedback on your website and its content.  They will provide great insight, so listen heard to what they are saying.

Finally, remember that your website is an important interface to your current and potential customers.  It is a ‘shop window’ on your business.  Buit if it was a real shop, you wouldn’t let the paint peel from the walls, the stock be covered in dust and never change the main displays. 

Leaving your content unchanged for a long time on a website is just like that … maybe it’s time for a web ‘mop and bucket’.

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