How does this work? When you update your website and write new content, you’re providing value to your existing clients and customers, ensuring your site ranks higher in online searches, and bringing in new audiences. All of which boost your business’ reputation, income, and sales.
Tending to your site may seem like yet another chore taking you away from your business, but in reality, when you update your website, you’re doing great things to help your business grow.
Here’s how the circle of life for websites works from a technical, organic, and community-building perspective:
See the circle taking shape?
The more words you have on your website, the more landscape there is for Google to crawl over as it looks for specific keywords.
Keywords are the words people use when they do online searches for things. For example: “writing coach for nonfiction book proposal” or “fair trade coffee delivery.”
The more extensive your site’s landscape, the more likely it is that you will have used the specific keywords people are searching for.
This is entirely about volume: let’s say you own a bakery that specializes in gluten-free treats, and you blog once every few months or not at all. Your competitor across town that specializes in treats for folks with dietary issues blogs once a week. Which of you is more likely to have spoken to what people are searching for?
When someone does an online search for something you offer on your site or have written about in a blog (and you’ve used specific strings of keywords (called “long-tail keywords”)), Google will locate those keywords on your website. Ping! That is in and of itself the first win.
Takeaway: sorry, Marie Kondo, but more is merrier when it comes to digital volume on your website.
As a next step, Google will look at the bigger picture: the container holding the keywords, or your web pages’ “health”.
When Google locates the keywords on your site, it doesn’t serve up your site right away. No, this is when it digs deeper to determine whether those keywords are nestled in an otherwise valuable vessel of website pages and a website generally.
What defines “valuable” when it comes to a website? The SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, criteria Google uses to check your site’s value change daily, but some of the big ones are:
A website that hasn’t been updated indicates to Google that it’s less valuable.
You may have used the keywords, it may be mobile-friendly, and you might have satisfied a number of the criteria.
But if your site has not been updated, it may drop down, even waaaay down the list when someone is searching for what you do and offer (and no one has time or interest to weed through the hundreds of pages of businesses when they’re Googling “best gluten-free scones near me”).
If your business isn’t in the top 2 or 3, that’s a lost sale.
Blogs
Blogs, which are online articles that speak to a need or concern your clients and customers have and provide insights, tips, or other valuable information that helps them make your audience feel uniquely heard, understood, and valued. Those emotions translate into their feeling a personal connection to your business, which then translates into loyalty, which translates into sales. That’s all currency, and one that pays off exponentially!
Blogs indicate to people that you are invested in their well-being enough to take the time to help them by providing information that’s useful to them.
People naturally feel warmer toward a business that blogs because a well-written blog is akin to a conversation.
In our modern era of high tech everything and less and less human connection, your human voice reaching out with wisdom and care means a lot to your audience.
Sharing blogs is something people readily do when they feel they are useful, insightful, or touch a positive nerve.
The site pages
The core information and sales pages on your site showcase who you are, what you offer, and your pricing. You want to make sure the website pages are optimized for search engines with keywords, meta data, etc. as well as are easy to read and feel visually and emotionally inviting with on-brand images and tone. Your website is your business’ online store, and of course you want it to be inviting.
Now imagine the stuff in the store as inventory; if you leave it on the shelf for too long untouched, it will get dusty and go past its expiration date. In time, your visitors will stop visiting.
When you update your website content on your core pages it shows your audience that you’re out there (the magician behind the curtain) and that you care to connect with them where they are now.
An example of this might be to offer a discount for a specific holiday, new products your clients and customers are requesting, updated information about what you and your team are up to on your “About” page, or new pages that offer more services, information about your services or products, or recent reviews or press.
There isn’t a hard and fast rule for how often you should update your content. The most important thing to remember is that updating keeps your content fresh and relevant. A good rule of thumb is to revisit pieces at least once a year. If you have a trends article for a specific year, set a reminder to come back to that piece and update it for the next year.
When people feel connected to a business, they commonly align themselves with it, wanting to keep company that enhances or augments their own values or character. That’s one of the ways in which communities are created and why people talk about “their” beer, wear branded clothing, buy apple computers, and carry tote bags from the public library, the New Yorker, or One Lit Place 
. One could argue that a substantial percentage of who we are as people is constructed from our associations with others.
Takeaway: It’s a competitive world out there. There are plentiful business that not only offer the same products and services as yours but that also make the time to continually update their websites and write blogs to serve their customers and maintain their business’ circle of life.
Make sure you build in systems to update your content to stay at the top of your game.
When you update your website, you’re putting your business’ best foot forward with your audience as well as putting yourself in the best position for being served up to new audiences as one of the top useful businesses who does what you do.
Making writing new content and updating your website a part of your day-to-day operations will ensure your business remains healthy, and your audience happy, and the wonderful circle of growth continues.
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