If you’ve engaged an SEO firm for your site’s search engine optimisation, your consultant has probably discussed with you the importance of fresh content. There is a logical link between site updates and increased search engine attention, so it’s fairly easy to understand where your consultant is coming from. What many site owners don’t know is that fresh content does a lot more that merely gain search engine attention.
The way regular content updates affect your site is complicated, and even experts who have studied the subject for years aren’t certain as to the extent of the effect. It seems that, unlike most other SEO tactics, placing fresh content on your site is entirely beneficial. Usually, with an SEO method, you have to be careful of the bad side-effects. With fresh content, all side-effects are good side-effects.
The Google equation
Everyone knows that all aspects of a website are judged by the series of mathematical equations in a search engine’s algorithm. For the average site owner, facing up to these equations is one of the more challenging aspects of search engine optimization. Talking to a professional can be of immense help, and you can approach us at SEO Consult Australia. Understanding these equations, at least in part, is important if you want to figure out what the search engines want you to do.
This is especially true when it comes to updating content. The effect of an update has been expressed in previous algorithms as ‘U = f(UF, UA)’, or ‘update = the weighted sum of update frequency combined with the score for the updated content.’ In very, very simple terms, this means that a whole lot of things about your fresh content are taken into account, not least of which is its intrinsic value as quality content.
How fresh content contributes
This snippet of information has told the SEO industry a lot about how important consistently posted fresh content is to a site’s optimisation. Here are just a few of the ways in which Google takes fresh content into account in calculating your ranking:
*Amount. Naturally, changing very small elements on your site will have less effect in comparison to posting a nice fresh article. The search engines are interested in quality changes, ones that their users will be interested in. Posting a whole page will have a different effect to changing one sentence.
*Type of content. Google weighs different content in different ways. For example, it is thought that the search engine looks at comment posts differently to full-page posts, and so on.
*Over time. If you post fresh content on a regular schedule over time, Google comes to view your site as one which is reliably up to date. This can be an important factor if your niche has any time-relevant factors, as it means your site will be boosted up in the listings.
*Changing behaviours. One of the surprising things about the way Google analyses your site is how much your usual behaviour counts. Don’t change too drastically.
