How often should I update my website?

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In this issue of Tech Talk, we will discuss how often you should be updating your website, the benefits of doing so, and how Search Engines rank you in the process.

• ECommerce – Try to entice your shoppers by placing seasonal/intelligent promotions on the home page or landing pages of your site. The refreshed content and promotions will mean a lot to repeat customers, especially those who periodically check your site for the latest deals. A quick look at your analytics data will reveal how many of your visitors are repeat or first-timers. Ecommerce sites should be updated weekly.
• Referral and Lead-Generating Sites – Sites built to generate leads depend on engaging ways to collect that information. We recommend updating your website with nice contact forms and social sharing buttons, so you may collect data and create “buzz” within social circles. Referral sites are rarely updated, maybe once every 3 months.
• Corporate Website – Even if your business has nothing to do with the web, doesn’t sell products online, or facilitate transactions online, a website is still the onlne representation of your business. Being stale is the last thing you want your business to be known for. We recommend updating your corporate website monthly. Typically with company news and events.
• Community Websites – The best way to regularly update your website is to involve the community itself. Community websites should be updated very often — if not daily. The easiest way is to setup a form and use social networking to get conversations started on your site. Forums are a great way to keep the conversations going.  

When Google introduced “Panda” in February 2011, it changed everything. The update filtered out sites that were not of high quality, and lowered the rankings of sites that were not actively updating their content.

Since the update we’ve seen many tactics to raise your ranking on Google, but the best one by far is blogging. If setup correctly, a blog can increase your traffic and it can help your website rank for more keywords. Here are a few blogging tips:

• Keep content relevant
• Update regularly
• Promote products within articles
• Link to other pages within articles
• Use attractive images
• Consider video blogging

In combination with blogging, we recommend distributing your posts to social networks automatically through the use of RSS feeds. This method of distribution guarantees that each of your pages and posts are shared to a wide audience — giving your site more exposure than ever. Check out the website of the month to learn more about content distribution.

Not all search engines work alike, but most of them use similar algorithms to determine your site’s ranking on the web. Keeping your content fresh and up-to-date will not only appease search engines, but it will keep your customers coming back to see what’s new. There are other aspects which determine your search engine ranking, however, creating fresh content is a great place to start.

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