We often hear that updating blogs and websites often with fresh content ensures that you get noticed by search engines and that your website will be indexed more often if there is new content.

For instance, we know that content from news sites and PR sites are always fresh because the content is updated very often. Is that why is it indexed by search engine robots so frequently?

Yes, one of the chief reasons would be because of the fresh content that these news and PR sites keep churning out. But ranking would depend upon authority along with various other factors.

One thing is for sure, fresh new content means your website is active and up and about. A website that has not been updated for several months might not hit the popularity chart because there is nothing happening there. But will the existing content if it if was optimized well and was ranking well too, continue to rank well? Does such a site lose its overall visibility or does it continue to do well and rank well?

Let’s explore this.

In the last decade the search engine ranking pages (SERPs) have gone through a lot of changes, you will no longer find only websites featuring on the SERPs. The SERPs are now a mix of results from various platforms comprising of news, social media sites, Video, websites, blogs…

Search engines are trying to give the searchers the best searching experience possible which means they would optimize their algorithms to provide the best results in terms of relevance and popularity. Websites that are already an authority site, and are popular in terms of visitors and have very relevant and optimized content will most certainly enjoy better placement/rankings on the search engines. When there are updates on these websites, the chances of those showing up on top of the search results are much more vis-à-vis a website that posts similar relevant posts but is not an authority, and does not get as many visitors or have very high quality content.

For instance, there are times when you will see 2-3 results from the same site in the first page itself. The logic being, search engines, are focusing on some of the below-mentioned factors, to rank websites, irrespective of whether the pages that are ranking well belong to the same domain :

1. Website Authority

2. Content Relevance

3. Content Quality

4. Content Freshness

5. Commitment

6. Attracting traffic

7. Retaining traffic,

and

8. Conversions

Content is very important, we know, and so is fresh content, but these can take a website only till a certain point. The need is to strive to reach a point of authority. For many small businesses it is important that they create a niche for themselves and become an authority in that niche. The goal should be to strive to become a website that relevant visitors can’t do without visiting at least once a day.

To answer the question “Is fresh content enough to lure search engines?”
It might bring search engine robots more often to your website to index it but it will certainly not warrant ranking well because of various other factors (mentioned-above) that are considered critical in order to rank well.

Therefore, an existing site that was ranking well but has not been updating the site or adding new quality content for months will slowly lose its ranking.

Some of the factors that every webmaster might consider keeping in mind before adding new content to their websites:

1. Your web pages need to be search engine optimized.

2. Overall your website has to strive to attract traffic and retain them.

3. Your website needs to strive to become an “authority”.

4. A website should employ strategies in keeping with the current times, like visibility through social networking, social sharing, in order to gain visibility

5. Fresh, relevant, high quality, and current content is the key and not any content for the sake of posting content.

What do you think?