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Stale Content is a Web Site Killer

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Stale Content

Whether you are a long-time small business owner or are just getting your feet wet running things, you may or may not have a firm grasp of SEO marketing.

In either case, I can speak from experience in telling you that one of the ultimate negatives that can befall your company site is having stale marketing content for all eyes to see.

Along with a bad public perception of your site if your content is outdated, it also proves unfriendly to search engines. Sites I have worked with over the years generally try and update their content on a daily basis or every other day. Posting an article here and an article there quite simply will not cut it.

If you are unsure of whether or not the approach you are taking to adding marketing content to your site is correct or not, consider the following:

Strategy matters

While most companies have some form of marketing strategy in place, it is not uncommon for smaller businesses to do things on the fly at times, be it budgetary or other constraints.

Make sure you map out a strategy as to how to present content on your site, what the message is you want to achieve with such content, how you will respond to engagement from the public, and how you are always thinking ahead and not backwards.

Link to success

It is more than likely a given that a fair portion of your site content will revolve around links, be it blog posts, guest posts on other sites, etc.

Take the time to analyze which keywords will serve you best in bringing more traffic to your site. If you are writing content that will be displayed on other sites, use the keywords that will be most effective in driving traffic to you.

As an example, if your company business revolves around selling life insurance, some good keywords to use besides life insurance would be life insurance quotes, life insurance premiums, life insurance sales, etc. Always be thinking about which keywords will have the most impact in linking back to your landing pages.

Dates do count

When you are posting press releases and other such content to your site, make sure they are fresh and relevant. If you have little or no occasion to post press releases in the first place, then think twice about putting them up on the site. Having a press release once every three to six months on your site makes it look like not much is happening with your company. While that may not be the case, perceptions do matter among present and potential customers.

Design a winner

Just as key as the content is, having a reader-friendly design for your company site is important too. Have an outside source take a look at your site to see what can be done to better it. They can approach the site without bias and give you an honest assessment of it, hopefully letting you know what works and what does not. It also does not hurt to have a select group of your clients reviewing your site from time to time. They can give you a fresh perspective, allowing you to see things you may have missed from an in-house review.

Have a real voice

Finally, your ultimate goal with content is to connect with the consumer, be they a present client or a potential one. If you are essentially just putting content out there as filler, you are not only letting yourself down, but you are providing nothing of value to the consumer. Write content that engages the consumer, wants them to come to you as an authoritative figure, and lastly keeps the dialogue going. By engaging the consumer, you are also in a position to have them take potential action, such as completing a lead form, being eligible for special deals for first-time customers, etc. Look at this as the start of a long and potentially healthful relationship aka a better return on investment (ROI).

When all is said and done, strong online content demonstrates the competency in your company, along with giving the consumer more faith in what products and/or services you have to offer.

If you are seen as an authority in your respective industry, you can bet that your online content had something to do with this perception.

Image © stokkete – Fotolia.com

About

Miguel Salcido has been a professional SEO consultant for over 9 years, holding Director and VP positions at large agencies. He now offers consulting services through his site, OrganicSEOConsultant.com.

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{ 16 Responses }

  1. Gautam says:
    hmm.. some of the best Points for a Newbie Blogger and it can help us very much and the best Think in this post is its Catchy Title.
  2. Russell Stewart says:
    Great advice for a newbie like me! I am yet to write my first blog but I am so keen to learn everything I can. This article really spelled it all out in a simpleand easy to understand format! Thanks ........Russ (Brisbane)
  3. mathew says:
    Couldn't agree more, Miguel. And yes, dates do matter Sergio. Always have dates shown as people rely on this often with their information. I was going to take my dates off also, but couldn't work out how lol (luckily)
  4. Astro Gremlin says:
    It makes me nuts that really great posts (in my humble opinion) get little traffic, when my latest musings of whatever quality appeal to Google. Imagine a library card catalog that guided readers only to books published in the past week. We would miss out on everything from Homer to Shakespeare! Freshness is great as long as the content (news, trends) warrants it. But there are classic old posts out there that I want to find when I search.
    • Miguel Salcido says:
      You can always do things to refresh old content. Like go back into the article and add updates. Or point some new links to the content to get it to rank better. Or re-add it to a new newsletter. Or tweet old content out every once in a while. Or find other related content and comment on it, leaving a link back to your content on that subject.
  5. Aditya says:
    Uniqueness is one word which helps you stand out of the crowd.Thats why its important to write unique content which makes its own significance in your niche.Great insights shared by you here.
  6. Al Sefati says:
    Great post Miguel. Freshness of content is supper important. A good percentage of searches are new that have never been searched before so only good up to date fresh and quality content can capture a little bit of that.
  7. Warren says:
    What about the sites that remove the date stamps from posts? I've always wondered if that was a good idea or bad. I've always left them on (not out of strategy, just because they were there when I got there) :)
  8. swen says:
    Can we blog with multiple content or shall we focus on one topic like seo, webdesigning e.t.c, having multiple topic in blog will affect seo kindly give a reply please
    • Sergio Vasco says:
      I don't think having multiple content will affect SEO in any way. However, you have to make sure that the content is of high quality.
      • Miguel Salcido says:
        I think that it is super important to do keyword research and look for long tail keywords that are relevant to your business. Then let those keywords guide the theme of your content writing. Another good tip is to look at your analytics and see what keyword people are using to find your site and build more content around those.
  9. Anirban says:
    Hey Miguel, Thanks for sharing this valuable article. I agree with your all points. You told that "Take the time to analyze which keywords will serve you best in bringing more traffic to your site". It is most important point and another point is - We should use keyword maximum 2 to 3 times in all over the article.
  10. Saad says:
    Having A Unique writing style in blogging is really important I always try to experiment new things with my articles plus new design and attractive images :)
  11. Sergio Vasco says:
    I post content that is time insensitive. So I opted to not display dates at all. My design seems cool to my eyes (and hopefully my readers). Having my own style of writing is what I am concentrating next.
    • Miguel Salcido says:
      Hi Sergio, so it sounds like you don't use dates because you feel that your type content does not warrant it. But looking at the site you linked to from your comment I would argue that it does need dates, not in the URL, but on the page. Your current article is easily one that could need updating or that someone would want/need to know when it was published. It is about responsive WordPress themes, and we all know that WP themes all come and go and many drop off and are no longer supported. In fact I can tell you that I've personally been to many old WP theme blog posts like yours and found that all but one of the themes they review went to dead links. (Hmmmm, good link building technique for sites that sell WP themes there! :-))
      • Sergio Vasco says:
        You have a valid argument there. Now, I'm considering adding a "Last Updated" section below the title. I found the_modified_date function in the WordPress codex. Thanks Miguel :)