One of the most important factors that affect the search engines indexing your web pages for search engine results pages (SERP) positioning and page rank is changing website content.  If your pages are published but never updated or changed, you will never be ranked high enough to show up in the first few pages of a SERP.

Changing Content - SEO SOS #13

The question then, is how do you keep your website fresh with changing content?  You've spent hours upon hours coming up with keyword-rich content with value for your viewers.  Now you are being asked to change it?  Well, we're not going to change the content so much as continue to add to it.  There are a few methods for providing a changing landscape on your website and satisfying the search engines that your site has not been ignored by you.

RSS News Feed   

There are several sources for news feeds that will update your page to the latest news each time the page is loaded.  If you locate a feed that is pertinent to your business, you are providing your viewers with information of interest and the search engines see your page changing daily - even hourly - avoiding the stale content issue.  In fact, however, using an RSS Feed, which is a linking script that automatically searches the Internet for information relevant to the feed, is less important for your viewers than it is for the search engines.  After all, we are trying to insure that the search engines see the changing environment so they view your pages as always fresh.

Newsletters

Surely your business can offer information of interest to your clients and customers on a regular basis.  After all, if your business is a viable competitor in your marketplace, you probably have much to say both about your business, its offerings and the industry in general.  Post this on your website on a regular schedule, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or quarterly.  This is, however, a commitment that you have to make to meet the established schedule.  Nothing looks worse on your website than a quarterly newsletter for the first quarter of last year.  You should also consider tandem delivery methods for your newsletter such as a link to a downloadable PDF file, emailing the newsletter with text intact and with a link to the website as well as a link to the downloadable PDF file.

Announcements

From time to time your business has announcements that you can post about employee awards or promotions, product changes, special product offerings or government regulations that affect your business or product.  These do not have to be timed as stringently as newsletters but should be changed or updated at least monthly. You don't want your news to become stale-dated; old news is no news.

Contact Information

If you have added employee contact information to your website, make sure that all the links are correct.  Be sure to remove employees that have left the business and add the new employees as they come onboard.  If your phone numbers or address changes, get those changes on the website immediately.  If you have client information on your website, be sure that it is also up-to-date. Attention to these details impacts how your potential clients will view your attention to detail when you work with them.

Checking Link Validity

Your site will also have links to other websites that can change without your knowledge from time to time.  Be sure to check on a regular basis to make sure that these links are working.  A dead link doesn't help your website and certainly impacts your image if someone tries to use it and it fails.  This is the kind of ongoing website maintenance that you need to do yourself.  Don't rely on your web designer to do this for you.

Simple Content Modification

On a regular basis, you should also review your standard web content and make simple changes that will reflect that your website is changing, not only to the search engines, but also your hoped-for return visitors.  Give your visitors a reason to return.If your content does not change on the home page one iota from month to month to month, even with changing content on your sub-pages, a viewer has little motivation to return.  Most people are not aware of the fact that it takes, on average, seven contacts before you turn a lead into a customer.  If you can keep a visitor returning to your website because they want to see "what's next" on your site, you have a chance of converting that visitor to a customer and then to a repeat customer, the real source of profitability for any business.

The Internet offers a different landscape for marketing your business.  It is not the static environment of printed ads but rather the kaleidoscope change that your business offers its customers.  Let your website represent you in that manner and you will keep attracting the search engines, new customers and repeat customers.

Copyright © 2012 TAO Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved.

Reprinted by permission.

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The author, Chesa Keane has been designing and developing web sites with an eye toward search engine optimization and traffic generation since 1995.  TAO Consultants offers online web and SEO courses to help you make the most of your web business and investment at the www.computergoddess.com website.

Your homework this week is to come up with a plan to create a plan for an ongoing schedule of repeated web content changes, modifications and additions.  Stay on topic, remember to include some of your primary keywords and keyword phrases and make the commitment to do this on a regular basis.