When you log on to CNN.com or MSNBC.com or any other news site, is there ever a day when you find they haven't updated their content? Do they sporadically write news stories in fits and starts? Of course not. They update with a steady stream of content to keep people coming back day in and day out. So why should your blog be any different?
Consistency is one of the most important things to consider when developing your blog. I'm talking not just about in the quality of the content (although that is important), but the regularity with which your website is updated. With a trillion websites at any user's fingertips, you can't afford to have someone come to your site and click away just because you don't have the latest content up on your site. If you want people to continue to come to your site, you have to be consistent.
Not All Blogs Are Created Equal
Obviously, the frequency of your updates will vary depending on the kind of website you're running. If you have a news site, for instance, you or your team might be posting dozens of stories and links per day. These will generally range in length from a few short sentences to feature content that runs multiple pages. It might even be a press release. However, the updates should come constantly in such an organization.
On the other hand, a corporate website dedicated to the latest in garage door openers and closers will probably update with much less frequency. Even so, it's important to get some kind of content up almost every day, or at least every week day. Whether it be a news story from some obscure town in the Midwest about garage door sales numbers or just a general, "Here's what we've added to the site," a blog needs to constantly be updated. Think about this: how many websites do you surf to on a daily or near-daily basis? And how many of those go-to sites don't update regularly? I'm guessing most of them do.
Search Engines and Audience Perception
There are two key reasons as to why websites should be updated at least daily. The first has to do with the sheer amount of content you're putting up. The more content you post to your site, the more combinations of keywords that become searchable by the various search engines out there. Hence, a much greater number of people will stumble upon your site. Mind you, these numbers aren't going to be large if you're just starting off, but they will increase exponentially if you continue to keep up with your posts. Constant upkeep is crucial in making sure you're consistently drawing more and more people to your blog.
The other reason has to do with peoples' perception of your website. If you run a business and have created a blog to draw attention to that business, then perception can mean the difference between "Add to Shopping Cart" and clicking the back button. Shoddy and out-of-date work will no longer be tolerated in the vastness of the web; there's too many other outfits who offer a similar service. If someone comes to your website, and sees that the site's blog has been updated daily for the past two or however many years the site has been active, they'll know that the people who run that site have put care into every aspect of the business. If, on the other hand, blog entries seem to have no rhyme or reason to their consistency, with a smattering of short posts in early August here and a lengthy report or two there, it makes it seem like the company doesn't even care about the blog, so the user's mind will immediately create a negative opinion of that site. If I go to a website, and see that their blog hasn't been updated since February of this year, then alarm bells immediately go off in my head. I question whether the company is legitimate or a scam, whether they're still in business, if I've been infected with some kind of malware. It might not be fair, and the people behind the business could be the nicest in the world, but it's the simple truth.
Quantity Begets Quality
To combat this, always be up to date on your blog. If a big news story happens in your industry, post a link to it, run a commentary. If there's no front page headline stuff happening, then do a little research. Do a moment in history posting and explain how on this day 65 years ago the first automatic garage door was installed on a military base in Nepal. Failing that, just wish your customers a great day and thank them for coming to the site. It might sound like pandering, but I for one am much more likely to take my business to a website that thanks me for stopping by than a website whose last entry concerns whether or not "Avatar" will be a hit in 2009.
It's also important to remember that this is a wonderful way to keep people coming back to your website. Just as people will eat at the same quality restaurants or buy the same dependable tires, so too will people continue to visit a site that consistently delivers quality content. This doesn't just have to apply to a business, either. Even if your blog is just a way to tell the world your thoughts on life, the more you put out there, the better the chance somebody will read your musings. Your witticisms might not all be gems, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.
No matter what kind of website you're in charge of, consistency and regularity should be the cornerstone of your blog. It's the first step to success, and without it, you can never hope to attract regular visitors to your site. With it, you can not only bring people to your site, but you can keep them there, and maybe, just maybe, even get them to click on that all-important Facebook Like icon hovering on their screen.
Rich Fraiser is an online marketing expert. When he is not writing blogs for SEO Services he is managing SEO, PPC, and social media marketing campaigns for clients all over the United States