What is Website Content and What Does it Even Mean to Keep It “Fresh?”
Before we can really get into why it’s so critically important to keep your website content fresh, we need to cover the basics.
Last week we talked about website content ideas for your body shop website in 2021 and we touched very briefly on why it’s SO IMPORTANT to keep your website content fresh.
Here’s a quick recap.
Website content includes a lot of things but, arguably, the most important content on your website is the text or “copy” and so that’s what we’re going to focus on.
What does it really mean to “keep your website content fresh?” It does not mean that every single piece of content on your website was published yesterday. Basically, it boils down to publishing content frequently enough that some piece of content is always recent. That’s the indicator to Google that your site is staying on top of things and worth showing to Google Search users.
Why It’s Important to Keep Your Website Content Fresh – In a Nut Shell
Here’s the short and sweet breakdown on why it’s SO IMPORTANT to keep your website’s content fresh and it all comes down to “wants.”
- People want quality answers that are current and come from someone trustworthy.
- Google wants people to keep using their search engine, so they try to share the highest quality, current, answers from trustworthy sites in the form of “search results.”
- You want Google to show your website in search results, so that those people will get familiar with your brand and ultimately trust you enough to become customers. That means you want to become the source of quality, current answers.
Let’s Dive Deeper
The trick is to think like Google.
So, let’s dive deeper into why it’s so important to keep your website’s content fresh. After all, good website content is all about creating value and an “experience” for you potential customers, right?
Yes!
But here’s the kicker. You can have the best written, most informative, super engaging content out there. You can exactly answer your target market’s questions – and it won’t matter! If they never see it.
It’s easy to say it’s up to Google to decide whether or not your content will get shown to people. And that’s not wrong. But that’s not to say you have no influence.
The Trick is to Think Like Google.
Google is a business just like any other. A GIANT business with many faces, but a business nonetheless. Google wants to be THE place people go to find answers right? So, Google wants to return realllly good content when someone searches for “How to repair hail damage.” If they don’t, people will get frustrated and search somewhere else.
So, Google builds algorithms that try to find the best answer to users’ questions. But Google Search is essentially just a bunch of robots. Jim at Google isn’t reading all the text on all the sites in all the world to see what’s the best match for Sarah’s search, right? So, the robots follow rules – complicated rules. But essentially, the rules tell Google what’s current, relevant and coming for a trusted source so that Google can show that to Sarah.
How Does GoogleBot Know What Content is “Best?”
It used to come down to keywords. A user searches for blue sweaters, here’s a page all about blue sweaters. Done and done.
Of course, what happened was companies created webpages stuffed with the words “blue sweaters” without providing any real value. That’s not what searchers want. That’s not what Google wants.
So how could Google filter out the “quality” results? There are a couple of indicators like how well respected is the website and how long has it been around and we can go into more detail on that another day.
But one thing that helps Google judge quality is “freshness.” How recently was a site updated? How often is a site updated?
So basically, people want current, relevant, trusted answers. Google wants to give them that.
And your job is to create what the people want, and to let Google know you’re doing it by keeping GoogleBot’s rules in mind.
How Collision Websites Helps
What is Collision Websites? Collision Websites is a digital marketing company specializing in body shop website building for auto body shops. We provide several premium auto body shop website templates pre-loaded with professionally written body shop content. Our templates are pre-built and are so, so easy to customize using our Free Page Builder.
Check out our professionally built body shop designs, learn more about all the great features we offer, then, if you like what you see start a FREE 14-day trial. We won’t ask you for your credit card to start the trial and if you choose to upgrade into a paid plan we won’t lock you into any long-term contracts. We’re here to help you, not pressure you.
Shoot us an email at support@collisionwebsites.com if you want to learn more.
Keep safe and be awesome.
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