When it comes to blogging, or otherwise maintaining a presence online, fresh content is crucial. The longer any website goes without an update, the more search engines, like Google and Bing, start regarding that site as “old news.” Now, while having evergreen, or otherwise established content is a good, there still needs to be a flow of “new” to any website to stay relevant.
Just how often a website needs updated isn’t a well known metric. However, if you build and maintain a small network of blogs and small business websites, you’ll inevitably notice that after a while of not adding any new content, sometimes a few days, sometimes a week or two, traffic to your website will begin to decline. What is happening is that various pages on your websites are beginning to rank lower because your site is being considered stale by the search engines.
Of course, this does not mean that every page on every site will suddenly plummet in traffic, but if you have a site that would get 5,000 page views per day, it may start dropping to 4,800 page views, 4,500 page views, and lower. Often, your best ranking pages will continue to hold their rank for longer. This is especially true if there isn’t a lot of competition for the specific keywords you are targeting.
Instead, you’re pages that normally get 25 page views a day, will start getting only 20. This is a rolling boulder type of problem. As those pages start ranking lower, fewer overall people visit your website. That means people who otherwise might have clicked a link to a better, or additionally interesting part of your website will never be onsite to see the link in the first place. Additionally, those pages provide part of the overall site ranking of your blog or website. For each lowering in importance, that lowers the overall quality of your site, which causes further decreases in rankings, which results in even fewer people being on site. And so on.
Fortunately, the answer is simple: add more content. Remember, not everything has to be the end-all-be-all on every topic. Quick notes about current events, or updates about your endeavors will keep your website fresh just as much as another volume of War and Peace will.
No one is saying to write junk. Even if it doesn’t hurt you in search rankings (and it really doesn’t seem to unless there is a lot of it), it can still turn visitors, who otherwise might become loyal readers away. You never get a second chance to make a first impression is especially true when the Back button is just a wrist flick away.
Keep your websites up to date by using a content calendar, or publishing calendar to keep good ideas at hand and to ensure that you are posting them regularly. Daily updates are great, but every other day is still leaps and bounds better than weekly, or less. Monthly updates probably barely keep you in the game.
So, keep writing, or paying awesome freelance writers like me to write for you. Not every page will draw in thousands of page views, but every new page and every bit of new content helps preserve your relevance and build your overall website reputation and power, and that is what it is really all about.