British philosopher Alan Watts once said, “Trying to describe yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.” Nowhere is this more true than on a website. Once you’ve spent a considerable amount of time crafting your message and presenting your business to your web audience, it’s difficult to update your content so that it says the same thing, differently. Even the best content creators run out of rabbits to pull out of their hats.
Updated content, however, is key to keeping your website relevant, both to your customers and to search engines, which send new customers your way.
So how do you update content when there seems to be nothing more to say?
The fact is, there is always something more to say. Always. Your basic business model may not change, but business is constantly changing, and that gives you something to talk about.
If you’re a manufacturer of green widgets, and you add a new line of red widgets, you can spend some time talking about those red widgets and what sets them apart from the green ones in your core product line. Just be mindful that after a certain point the red widgets will be just one more item in your product offerings, and you will need to treat the subject accordingly by rolling that information into your basic product line content. By then, however, you should have something else to talk about, maybe quite a bit of something else.
The question of how often to update your content can be answered with one word: consistently. For some companies, that may be once a month. For others, that may be once a week. Or it could be a point somewhere in between. It all depends on your business. The point is, set a schedule and stick with it.
The next question for updating content is one that only you can answer:
Who is responsible for the content?
If you haven’t already, designate someone in your company to handle the task of content. Make it a line item in their job description, and set the parameters for how often content should be reviewed and renewed. And this should go without saying, but – make certain that whomever you assign this task to has the necessary enthusiasm for the job at hand. Giving this responsibility over to someone who doesn’t understand the importance of it can result in nothing being done, and your website content becoming stale.
Updated content can be the key difference between a better position on search engine results and a slipping rank. Putting forth the effort in keeping content relevant can reap great rewards.
How often do you publish new / updated content to your company’s website?