My Cheese is Like Your Website: Moldy

I have a problem. A couple weeks ago, I bought fancy cheese. Really delicious, fancy cheese. Delectable on crackers. Mind you, I am not a connoisseur of fine cheeses, so it wasn't too expensive - more like $4.50 for a nice wedge. Anyway, all that matters is that my delicious cheese got moldy and had to be thrown away. Why? Well, after only eating a small portion of it, my fiancé and I promptly forgot it was there, and left it to die a lonely death in the crisper drawer.

Why am I talking about cheese? Well, my moldy cheese is like your moldy website. My cheese is at the bottom of my crisper drawer, and working on your website is at the bottom of your to-do list. And, frankly, we're both being wasteful. In order for your website to perform at its best, you've got to keep your content updated, timely, and fresh.

Why Fresh?

While you're probably a busy person, you most likely have one or two websites that you enjoy looking at often. Perhaps you check out the local news from a local newspaper like the Star Tribune, before visiting Mashable to get your daily dose of web news. What is it that makes you want to visit these sites daily? I'm guessing it has something to do with their content. It updates every day, and you find it interesting. These sites made it to "the top" by posting engaging, shareable content.

"So what," you're saying, "my site doesn't report news, and there's no way I can update it daily." That's fine. Stop worrying! It's important to find the balance between more than you can do and having a moldy site. You want regular users to to be engaged by new, relevant content when they return to your site. If they come back a couple times and everything is the same, they might just stop visiting. Also, fresh content encourages Google to come back and crawl your site again. Fresh content is, in fact, becoming more and more important for SEO.

Get Updating

To find your updated vs moldy balance, try following these steps.

1. Scrape off the mold. Go over what you've got and update anything that's out-of-date or wrong. Either update it, or if it's not relevant at all, remove it.
2. Start adding new content by adding obvious things. Is there a new service you offer, or a new project you've completed? Do you have new pictures? Have you added someone new to your team? Brainstorm about what you've got that you could add.
3. Add a blog if you don't have one already. A few examples of good blog posts:
   • Industry News/Updates
   • Company News
   • "Just for Fun" Posts - Something that interests you and will draw views, but may not be directly related to your business. Just make sure it's appropriate.
   • Insightful Pieces about Your Industry - Either from you or someone you ask to guest post.

If you're feeling lost about your content strategy, ask for help. Web Marketing Specialists, like those of us at ArcStone, are well versed in creating content, and we want to help! It's so important for your website nowadays that not having a content strategy in place is like letting expensive cheese (your website) get moldy in your fridge (the Internet).