We’ve had some clients for years – like 20+ years, and some that we have had for less than 6 months. Many of those shorter-term clients have the mentality that we have done all we can do for their site once we fix all the errors and get it running smoothly. Why bother paying anyone just for content?
Sure, once the site is running like a well-oiled machine, there’s not a lot of “fixing” that has to be done; just do the right things from here on out. But the problem is, most people don’t keep going.
Most businesses don’t have time to keep adding content to their site, promoting it, writing, creating content or updating their site.
So, when they think we’ve done all we can do, they cancel and just let the site sit there. I know this is true because I’ve gone back to sites we worked on 6, 12, 24 months after we last took over and there is nothing new on the blog, pages or the website. NOTHING. You know what Google thinks of that? Maybe they’re no longer in business. Don’t care about the business. They are not relevant. AKA – NOT RANKING ANYMORE.
Google likes to promote, rank, and present content less than 90 days old.
If you haven’t written anything new on your site in 90 days, Google will probably start to drop your site down the rankings, even if you have a perfectly optimized website and people are still clicking on it and going to it. So while you might have great content on your side that’s still relevant, if you’re not updating it or providing additional information, it can start to drop in the rankings. Google is looking for relevant and up-to-date information and that means even past content can use some updating.
I’m guilty of this myself. I know we have a lot of good information on our website, but I don’t always update it or go back and add more. However, in just about every industry, there’s always something going on, something new to update, some new piece of information you can add to your readers, even if it’s not a thousand words. It doesn’t have to be lengthy to be relevant. Google is looking for short answers, good content, and for readers to get what they came for right away.
So in the spirit of short content, I’m going to leave it at that. Keep updating your side and make sure your content is no more than 90 days old. If you haven’t written on your site in 3 months, now is the time to break out the dictation, warm up those fingertips, and get some new info on your site and update content today.