One of the most common mistakes of website owners is content stagnancy. The thrill of finally launching a website seems to burn through their adrenaline, putting a period on the long process that is creating a website from scratch. While such a reaction is understandable, you must also be aware that a website is a long-term commitment. It’s not something you stop working on the moment it goes live. On the contrary, the launch of a website is only the beginning.
Why Is It Important to Update Your Website?
Updating website content builds brand awareness and authority, and fosters customers’ trust. It can also boost SEO efforts through keyword optimisation. Best of all, updated and new content helps generate conversions and ROI.
Whether you own a personal website, e-commerce platform, or the official site for your business or company, the work doesn’t end with launching it. Case in point: it’s common for design, code, and UX (user experience) problems to emerge only after a website goes live. Similarly, issues regarding content sometimes appear only after they’re published (e.g., the paragraphs are too chunky or the text doesn’t fit in the layout).
But more than aesthetics, relevance and timeliness matter more for content. The problem is that some information eventually becomes irrelevant and out-of-date. For example, the articles that sanitation companies wrote about how their services prevent the spread of SARS is now outdated. What people want to know now is if their products can kill the COVID-19 virus.
This is just one example that emphasizes the importance of updating your website with fresh, high-quality content; and not just any content, but ones written by content writing experts.
What Kind of Content Should You Update?
There are “evergreen” content you don’t want to change or will require infrequent changes and updates:
- Information about the business/company and their history
- Descriptions of products and services
- User guides
- News, case studies, special reports
What content should you update regularly, then? Your blog. It’s the one place on your site where you can — and must — publish new content. Each new blog post, whether it’s an article, infographic, or video, can bring marketing and SEO benefits to your website.
There are many valid reasons to update your website, but here are five of the most important ones.
The Benefits of Publishing New and Updating Existing Content
Good for your image.
Outdated content is bad for branding and credibility. Imagine opening a website in August and finding the home page decorated with a cheerful banner that says, “Happy Holidays!” complete with holly and mistletoe. It’s funny and it can make you laugh. But wouldn’t it also lower your confidence in the business or company? If they can’t be bothered to update their website, who knows what other lapses they’ll ignore.
Visitors to your website can have the same thoughts. So when you publish seasonal content (e.g., seasonal promos, holiday greetings, time-limited sales), you should never forget to update them or take them down, whichever is more acceptable.
It’s not just seasonal content that needs updating but also informative blogs. Content that’s well-written and researched extensively can eventually become outdated, depending on the topic and the niche. Blogs that talk about statistical or industrial data is technically outdated the moment the newest set of numbers are released (which could be in a week, month, or year).
Good for SEO
Blogs are crucial for SEO campaigns because they give you room to talk about topics (and by extension, insert relevant keywords with high search volumes into your website) that you can’t discuss in your Homepage, About Page, Products & Services, Contact Page, etc.
Maintaining a blog is also an excellent way of ensuring content “freshness” and providing useful, high-quality content to your regular and new visitors. This, according to Google, is “the single most important thing” you can do to keep your website Google SERPs-friendly.
Builds brand authority and customers’ trust.
Google’s search ranking algorithm aside, regularly updating your website with relevant content helps strengthen your relationships with your customers and website visitors. It helps build your brand authority, which is essentially how much audiences trust you as a subject-matter expert in your niche. Brand authority has no numerical score, but a high perception of reliability often snowballs into other positive outcomes.
Increases website traffic.
This is one of the positive outcomes you can enjoy when you establish your brand authority through regular content production. Websites that are known to provide relevant, useful, accurate, and timely information get bookmarked the most. People seek out these domains even if their articles aren’t the first to appear on Google SERPs.
The SEO perks also come into play. New blog posts from authoritative websites tend to rank higher on Google, especially when they are keyword-optimised.
Generates conversions
All of the above contribute to this final benefit: conversions. These run the gamut from CTA clicks to membership subscriptions to actual sales.
Most blog posts drive awareness and increase customers’ interest in your products and services. Blogs, however, are very versatile and articles can be written to target audiences in various stages of the conversion funnel. For example, a blog post that addresses the growing needs of your current customers may have redirect links to the premium versions of the products or services you offer.
New and updated content can, therefore, generate new sales and foster brand loyalty.
Invest in High-Quality Content for Both Search Engines and Readers
The benefits of updating your website content are worth the investment when you work with content creators who understand SEO and digital marketing. Here at Media Crew, we don’t just write for the sake of writing blog posts or website content: we do it with your goal in mind. Whether it’s merely to keep your blog content fresh or ramp up your SEO campaign, our writers can produce high-quality content that leads to that outcome.
Get in touch with Media Crew and learn more about our professional content writing services today.
