Your Website Lives: So nourish it. And make Google happy too!

By Sarah McInerney  
| May 5th 2011

Sarah McInerney

Head of Content

Sarah has almost three decades of experience in crafting compelling, engaging content specifically designed to boost sales and enhance brand loyalty. She’s also an expert in developing unique tone of voice that helps brands connect with their audiences. Her marketing and client service background has given Sarah a natural understanding of how to write content that makes readers take action. Whether it’s signing up to a mailing list, making an enquiry or donation or clicking the buy button, Sarah knows precisely how to convert with words. Pen down, Sarah is a proud member of the Essex Wildlife Trust and spends most of her free time enjoying inspiring walks through her local woodland and nature reserves, admiring everything that flaps, flutters and flowers.

Google’s aim is to provide users with accurate, relevant and up to date information.

You’ll probably have noticed when searching via Google you can select results based on how recently a site’s pages have been updated: a ‘freshness’ search. So, keeping your website content up to date is clearly important if you want to appear at the top of these searches.

But it’s not just about changing the odd sentence on the odd page. Minor amendments do attract a ‘quick boost’ to rankings, but as soon as Google realises the odd few changed words here and there aren’t really adding any value to visitors, the rankings will soon drop.

Adding completely new content to your site, on a regular basis, is the way to go. This could be:

  • New content pages
  • Articles
  • Blogs
  • Company news
  • Industry updates
  • Events diary
  • Case studies

The more frequently you add content, the more often Google will visit and index your new material because they’ll get to know you have something to offer on a regular basis. Here are a few tips:

Make it regular: Don’t add lots of content all in one go; stagger your postings over the month and you’ll embed a regular pattern which won’t just work well search engine-wise, but will attract visitors to frequent your site for updates.

Make it useful: The word ‘nourish’ is a good one; not only does content need to be added regularly, it needs to be useful and bring benefits to the user. Google rates content based on this criteria. So, make sure your content is filled with useful guidance; a good resource for readers. Make sure it’s something they’ll want to share.

Make it public: And on that point, add ‘share’ buttons so readers can easily bookmark and post your information to their social media followers and fans so it’s seen by a wider audience.

And don’t stop there! Promote your new content externally so you drive traffic to it, and your website. Tweet it, Facebook it; with LinkedIn you can post it as an update and share it with your groups. Blog it and include it in any e-marketing updates you send.

Lots to do! Too much? We can help with all of the above.

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