Is your content fresh, or is it stale? It's no longer enough to simply throw up a few static web pages filled with keywords, then hope for the best. Search engines adore regularly updated sites. While a stale site tumbles down the Google results, a site with fresh content climbs the rankings.

Useful articles, posts and features draw in visitors and improve your credibility. A popular site is also a high ranking site. Of course, really great content that continues to attract links and page hits will stay fresh for longer.

An effective website maintenance plan should therefore prioritise content generation (and any company offering website development services should well understand this).

But what should you look out for when freshening up your website?

Google-friendly website maintenance

If there's one thing Google loves, it's content. But if your site content doesn't pass Google's own freshness test, then your rankings might suffer.

There's always an element of mystery to Google's search algorithms. However, according to their own historical data patent, Google deems a document stale if it is: no longer updated, diminished in importance, or superceded by another document.

In practice, that means that Google will rate your site based on:

The amount of traffic a page receives and any big drop-off in visits
The amount of links to a page, and whether or not there's a reduction in links
How long people spend on the page. Short visits indicate staleness.
Whether people click on your site in the search listings. Is it considered spammy?
Document creation dates and whether content has been updated since (and of course whether traffic and links have gone up or down)

Check your site content and the way you (or your web design agency) manage website maintenance. Would you pass Google's freshness test?

Think readers first, search engines second

Too many businesses forget about their site visitors in the pursuit of the number one search results spot and end up getting neither. Don't forget about your customers.

For example, if you create an entertaining, useful blog you will attract visitors. This in turn will generate inbound links from other relevant sites. Your content will then be seen by Google as fresh and your rankings will improve.

But where do you go to find ideas for new content?

News and blog search. Most local, trade and national online press is indexed by Google News. Yahoo! and others offer a similar service. You can root out all the stories relevant to your industry in a few seconds. The same applies to blogs which are also a great way to gauge current hot topics. Using Technorati and Delicious is a good way to find the most respected blogs.

RSS feeds and readers. Setting up a reader page means that you see all your relevant blogs and news sites collected in one place. Try Googlereader, Bloglines or Techmeme.

Sign up for alerts. Google alerts, for example, will send you a mail (you decide how frequently) with all the news activity relating to a particular term. Useful if you don't want to spend time every day searching the internet.

Social networking sites and Facebook groups. It's worth searching to see if there is a Facebook group related to the subject you're interested in.

Forums and Yahoo! Groups. These require a bit of sifting through, but online forums are often great places to pick up new ideas, different perspectives and find out what's making people tick.

Outsourcing. There are plenty of people and companies prepared to write articles and blog posts for you. However, be careful of paying peanuts for farmed out content. The result is often badly written text that doesn't reflect well on your business.

Contact Us
Online Business Solutions UK Limited,
The Old Truman Brewery,
91 Brick Lane, London E1 6QL.
Phone +44 (0) 20 7770 6255,
Fax +44 (0) 20 7770 6261
Web site: www.obs-group.co.uk