Many small business owners overlook the benefits of maintaining an active blog on their website. Taken at face value, the general response is understandable: “Who on Earth would read my business’ diary?”. Oftentimes, the answer is a clear “absolutely no one”. Here’s the catch: That doesn’t matter.
Search engines, like Google, aim to provide the most relevant and valuable results to users. To achieve this goal, search engine algorithms are designed to favor websites with frequently updated content for several reasons:
1. Freshness Factor:
Search engines prefer to display fresh and up-to-date content to users. When a website is frequently updated, search engines perceive it as more relevant because it indicates active management and ongoing relevance. Fresh content can be news articles, blog posts, product updates, events, or any other recent information.
2. Improved User Experience:
Websites with updated content offer a better user experience. Visitors are more likely to engage with a site that provides new and interesting information. Search engines track user behavior, such as the time spent on a website, bounce rate, and the number of pages viewed. A frequently updated site tends to have better user metrics, signaling its value to the search engine.
3. Keyword Relevance:
Regular updates allow websites to target new keywords and long-tail phrases related to their niche. By creating fresh content around different topics, websites can expand their keyword reach, making it more likely that they’ll match the search queries users enter into search engines.
4. Authority and Credibility:
Websites that update their content frequently are often seen as authoritative sources in their respective fields. When search engines identify such websites, they are more likely to rank them higher. Authority is often associated with how current and accurate the information on a site is.
5. Social Signals:
Content that is frequently updated and relevant is more likely to be shared on social media platforms. Social signals, such as likes, shares, and comments, are taken into account by search engines as indicators of a website’s credibility and popularity. Frequently updated content has a higher chance of being shared, thus positively impacting search engine rankings.
6. Indexing Frequency:
Search engines regularly crawl websites to index their content. Websites that update frequently are crawled more often, allowing search engines to discover new content quickly. This means the updated content can appear in search results faster than static or rarely updated pages.
7. Decreased Bounce Rates:
When a website offers fresh and relevant content, visitors are more likely to stay longer and explore multiple pages. This decrease in bounce rates (when users leave a website after viewing only one page) is a positive signal to search engines, indicating that the content is engaging and valuable to users.
In short, it’s not the blog posts that really matter. Websites with frequently updated content are favored by search engine algorithms because they presumably offer a better user experience, demonstrate authority and credibility, target a wider range of keywords, receive more social signals, and are crawled and indexed more frequently. All these factors contribute to higher search engine rankings, leading to increased visibility and traffic for the website.