Do you remember the first two weeks of your new website?

We get it all the time where clients will come to us raving about a terrific launch, with lots of enquiries, and then suddenly, a slow tapering away of interest until it is less than a gentle simmer.

It happens all the time.

But why?

People don’t understand; they start blaming Google, they start blaming competitors, and ultimately they are simply out of ideas.

Let me tell you: the recency of your content is to blame.

The what of my content?

Recency of content essentially talks about how fresh it is. When you understand what Google’s thinking it, it makes a lot of sense.

Imagine a situation where there are three competitors, all selling black pens. All three launch on the same day, with similar websites. However, two weeks after launch, the latest in the line of black pens is released. Extra grip and wrist support. The works. Two out of the three websites choose to update their merchandise (website number three forgot the CMS logins and can’t get on their page). Then four weeks later, another new pen from a new brand comes out, and all three update.

Of course, this is the story of 95% of businesses: refreshing the website when new stock comes, but otherwise, who cares?

What we didn’t talk about in this scenario was the web ranking that each website had.

Obviously, website number three wasn’t doing very well; with no new products for six weeks, their website plummeted, and so it should.

Website one and two both updated their pages, and benefited as a result.

But website one decided that they wanted to sell their products not just through individual listings, but by highlighting all the benefits available in a blog post, emailed to users and loyalty members once a week.

And lo and behold: their website was ranked number one for buy black pens online, because of their additional content.

Google looked at all the extra content, optimised for the keyword, and said that it was more relevant to customers.

See, Google wants their users to have a good time. If someone searches buy black pens online, obviously Google doesn’t want to show website three, with a complete lack of updated products, and they are more likely to show website one than website two because they give potential users more information, resulting in a better experience.

You need to work hard to add value to your website for users, and Google will reward you as a result.

Whether we’re talking weekly blogging, increased content amounts on new products added, or just refreshing landing page content on a regular basis; “new” content is king.

That’s not that easy though.

Yeah, I know.

Sorry, but neither was SSL certification, really.

You just need to do it though. We’ve seen clients come in with no content on their websites, and nothing being updated, and honestly, we can only do so much to deliver killer results.

If we revert back to the fishing analogy:

Fishing Rod -> Website

Fishing Lure -> Backlinks

It doesn’t matter if you have the best fishing rod in the world today, in six weeks, it isn’t going to be the best anymore. In 6 months, it’ll be even worse.

And really, actually, it shouldn’t be that hard.

Aren’t you the expert in your field? Surely, you can come up with 100 words about some topic related to your business?

It really is a simple but effective SEO tip. Update your content regularly and watch the results come rolling in.