Fresh Content: A Search Algorithm Indicator

June 20, 2019

If you own and operate a website, you may have a basic understanding of the importance of fresh website content. But you might, also, be unaware of how much fresh webpage content can affect a search engine’s algorithm with regard to your website’s ranking. A search engine algorithm is a series of formulas that are used to determine where a website will fall in a search list. The better the webpage is, in terms of search engine optimisation, the higher its ranking will be on a search list. Each search engine uses its own set of algorithms and these are constantly changing to improve results for users. There are certain things website owners, and their writing team, can do to use these algorithms to their advantage to improve their search engine rankings.

Using Social Media to Gain Readership

Once you have a live website with great original content, the job isn’t over. Generating traffic to your website is an ongoing project that you can never put on autopilot. With the rise of social media, your website has the chance to engage with its readers on a new level. The most important move, in this regard, is to place social sharing buttons on all content so readers can share the posts with their networks. Put these buttons at the top and bottom of each content page, so it’ll give a reader ample opportunity to share it.

Creating Fresh Content and Updates

Keeping content fresh is one of the easiest ways to maintain relevancy in the eyes of a search engine. Google and other search engines take notice of changes to webpage content and treat those updated pages as the most pertinent in a web search.

The more you update your webpage content, the more frequently your site will get indexed as well. This means that search engines will visit your website more often, which will help you attain a better ranking as time goes on. This happens thanks to web crawlers or, simply put, programs that scan the internet. These web crawlers index a website based on algorithmic influences that are individually determined by the search engine. Each update to a website makes a search engine pay attention to it and indexes it again. If the new content meets the algorithm’s criteria the webpage can get a higher ranking. Your writing team should constantly be creating new and original content to make sure the web crawlers return and index your website and hopefully get a higher ranking.

Your writing team can create blog content weekly or daily, depending on your site’s needs. To keep things fresh and appealing try coming at content from unique perspectives: interviews with industry authorities, product reviews, and even steady columns (opinion columns, for example) are great ways to add fresh website content, whilst still keeping readers interested in your site; you don’t want to make frivolous updates for the sake of search engines – this may alienate your readers.

If you don’t have an on-staff writing team, you can always outsource the work to a professional writing team. These writers will create content based on your website’s industry or they’ll follow topics you give them to write about.

Search Engine Algorithm Updates

Multiple times a year search engines, like Google, will change or update their search algorithms to produce better results for their users. Google changes their search algorithm upwards of 600 times a year. While most of these changes are minor, there are times where search engines will rework their algorithm and roll out a major update that can completely change page rankings and organic traffic across the board.

To better explain this, look at the latest (May 2014) update to Google’s search algorithm, Google Panda 4.0. This was a major update that reworked the search engine’s algorithm in order to offer a gentler impact on websites, especially smaller sites and businesses. A Google representative has also added that, while the update is softer on most websites, the updated algorithm will be the groundwork for future changes. Algorithm updates like this one can pose a problem to website owners and operators, since even minor changes can influence page rankings and traffic. As proof of this battle, popular shopping websites saw a decrease in their search rankings because the update caters more to original content. In order to combat these changes, it’s important to keep website content fresh and to update blog content or webpage content regularly.