The Importance of Updating your Website Regularly
UPDATE YOUR WEBSITE REGULARLY
By keeping your website updated, you can ensure that your website security will not be compromised. By updating the content and design of your website regularly, you can increase the traffic to your website, and increase your business!
Updating your website is important for a variety of reasons. Not only does updating a website increase website security and prevent hacking, but it can also help your internet marketing strategy and increase traffic to your website. This is why we suggest that businesses update their website regularly.
Updating a website can be done many ways. The three main ways are by:
Updating your website platform and security
Updating content
Updating the design and user-friendliness.
Source: theedigital.com
FRESH CONTENT = FREQUENT INDEXING
Don’t confuse this phrase with the thinking that fresh content will give you higher indexing. That may not be the case. However, the more frequently you update your website with articles, downloads, and new web pages, the more frequently a search engine will stop by to visit your website. When search engines look at your site more frequently, you have the opportunity to achieve higher rankings based on the content you provide.
Search engines use web crawlers (a.k.a robots, bots, or “Googlebots”), which are simply high-tech programs that scan the internet for websites. The web crawler “indexes” a site based upon a number of algorithmic factors determined by the search engine company.
For instance, a site may be indexed based upon a combination of the number of incoming links to the site, the number and type of subject keywords used, and how often a site is updated. Every time you make an update to your website, the search engine takes notice and re-arranges your site’s ranking. Thus, if you want to increase the chances of your website getting a higher ranking, update the content frequently so that a search engine will reassess your position on its index.
Keep in mind, more content is not the key here, quality is. So, yes, it is a good idea to update frequently, but keep your content standards high. If you blast your page with a ton of low-quality articles stuffed with keywords, you are going to be penalized.
By far, the most frequently used search engine is Google. As the king of all search engines, Google has a tremendous influence on webmasters and how websites are constructed. When Google expresses its love for websites that update frequently, this is a sure sign that you should add fresh content to your website as often as you can.
Of course, you should not make unnecessary changes, additions, or postings every hour of every day.
However, a site that is updated once a day, or at least two to three times a week, is considered a frequently updated site. The “Googlebot” that crawls the web is constantly searching for web pages that are new or updated and then adds the fresh content to the Google index. If you update your content often with reliable and valuable information, then you have a better chance of Google ranking your site higher with each update.
So, add an article, an image or just make some change on your site to get noticed. The easiest and most effective way to stay fresh is to add a blog on your site and continue to add articles that will get noticed by your viewers. If they comment on those articles, that counts as an update on your site. So, write something that will get the attention to begin helping with your frequent updates.
Source: seositecheckup.com
SEO BENEFITS
Search engines are constantly scanning your site to index pages and images. Once indexed, these pages and images will show up in searches From a purely quantitative standpoint, the more of your site that’s indexed, the more likely a prospective buyer will be able to find your site. But it’s not that simple. In addition to the sheer quantity of possible pages to find, search engines notice when you regularly update and post on your site.
If you are consistently generating content, smart search engines will recognize you as a valuable resource to display in a search result.
Source: uplandsoftware.com
HOW OFTEN TO ADD NEW CONTENT TO YOUR WEBSITE OR BLOG
The mission of each website is different and so are the updating requirements. You can’t expect a corporate blog to be updated as often as a regular blog or a regular blog as often as a news or sports blog.
I had the opportunity to work with clients in various industries and helped them with their website updating and blog management and in their majority, web properties can be classified in the following categories:
Sports / Fashion / Celebrity / Tech / Lifestyle / Financial / Newspaper / Magazines In this category I added websites or blogs that deal with trending topics.
For these websites updating with new information several times per day is crucial for their success.
There is no limit to the number of updates and generally the more the better. Most of their visits are coming from repeating visitors, social media and Google news.
Postings are usually short and to the point and contain a lot of images.
Normal Websites / Blogs This category includes blogs like the one you are reading now. In other words websites that provide evergreen content (content that stays relevant for a long period of time).
In this category you expect to find personal development blogs, how-to style blogs, informational blogs, wiki, marketing, weight loss, studies, analytics, travel tips, reviews and many more.
As a rule of thumb 3 updates per week are more than enough, there is no need to update daily unless of course you have the resources to execute such a task.
Corporate Website / Blog These are business websites that showcase a company and the products/services it is offering.
They are among the most difficult types of websites to update frequently because once the initial setup has been made and information about the company is published, you don’t have anything useful to publish.
Fortunately there is a way out and that is to create a corporate blog.
Let me give you a few examples of how a blog can help a business website have useful fresh content on a regular basis.
Source: reliablesoft.net
Law firms – They can use the blog to publish how-to and informational articles (‘What are my rights as a father’) and news on law related topics.
Company selling tyres – Informational articles about the use of different type of tyres, how-to articles related to DIY tyre maintenance.
Investment company – Articles on everything related to the financial sector, from economy news to investment advice.
Online Jobs website – Articles about professions that are trending or in need, how-to articles (‘How to prepare for your job interview’).
These are just a few examples that demonstrate that a blog can fit in almost any niche and industry.
What you need is out of the box ideas and resources to implement blogging correctly.
The same publishing ‘rules’ apply like normal websites, i.e. updating can be 2-3 times per week.
Why most corporate blogs fail: I have blogged many times about corporate blogs and why they fail and although this is not the core topic of this article, I will mention in summary the most common failure reasons:
Not allocating enough resources to make it work (both money and time).
Lack of useful, unique and informative content.
Wrong choice of blogging platform.
Not measuring the effectiveness and ROI from blogging.
Not giving it enough time.
Bad choice of article titles.
Not doing enough keyword research.
eCommerce Store Content marketing is one of the most efficient ways to promote your online store and it is not more difficult than it sounds.
Let me outline some examples on how content updating can work for an ecommerce website.
Imagine that you have your ecommerce website fully loaded with your products.
Articles / Videos on how to use your products
Detailed product reviews
Reviews comparing similar products
Articles that are indirectly related to your niche. For example if you are selling engagement rings you can provide blog posts related to weddings, how to propose etc
Announcement about new products, changes to existing products
Announcements about special offers and upcoming events
How often should you update your ecommerce blog? The answer is simple, when you have new HIGH QUALITY content to publish.
For an ecommerce website you need to be careful not to drive potential customers away but to give them content that they need.
If you can do this on a frequent basis that’s even better but I know from experience that this is hard to do.
UPDATING YOUR WEBSITE'S SECURITY
In our present day and age, security should be one of the top priorities for businesses both large and small. We hear all too often about large companies that get hacked, compromising information such as credit card or social security numbers of their clients. This leads to a lack of trust and also hurts the business – clients may choose to go to their competitors in fear that their information might be compromised again.
Source: theedigital.com
WHY SECURITY NEEDS TO BE EVERY BUSINESS' PRIORITY
Maintaining strong security protocols is critical for every business with an online presence. While this may be obvious in certain cases, too many businesses disregard the very real risks posed by poor security as not applicable to their situation. After all, if you have a very bare-bones website and don’t collect any sensitive customer data, do you really need to be worried about a security breach? The answer is a resounding yes. Regular back-ups of your website constitute a key aspect of website security , and businesses of all kinds need to pay attention to their website’s back-up schedule. Even brief outages when your website is down (whether due to an internal issue or as a result of malicious external interference) can cost your business dearly in terms of traffic, customer loyalty, and revenue.
Source: zerogravitymarketing.com
IMPROVE THE FRESHNESS OF YOUR ENTIRE SITE
It’s a fact: fresh sites rank better.
All things being equal, Google will place a higher priority on sites that update their content frequently.
This is one of the reasons why abandoned sites don’t rank well after a few years, even for articles that would otherwise be very helpful.
If Google recognizes that your site isn’t being updated recently, it will hurt the rankings of all the pages on your site.
To change this, you should skyrocket your traffic by bringing this old content back to life . A few updates on key articles can demonstrate to Google that your entire site is valid.
This means that every piece on your site will get a ranking boost as Google recognizes that you have fresh content on your site.
Whether correct or not, Google will interpret this as giving all the articles on your site a higher value, and it will improve the rankings for everything you’ve ever published.
Source: neilpatel.com
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