“How often should you update your website?” is one of our most asked questions when onboarding a new client.
This question primarily relates to organic search/SEO.
If you’re looking for a secret number, there isn’t one. However, we have a few guidelines that you can follow to determine how often you should update your website.
Reasons to update your website:
- Your website is not responsive or mobile optimized.
- Your website design is out of date.
- You need to improve your website speed.
- You need to fix your core web vitals.
- You have an SEO strategy that involves updating existing copy, adding new copy to existing pages, or adding additional pages to your website to rank higher and for more keywords.
- Your SEO strategy involves posting new blog content to attract more visitors to your website for your desired keywords.
- You have a social media following that expects multiple daily updates in the form of blog posts or news articles.
- You’re adding new products or services to your offering.
Mobile & responsive website updates
You can update your website’s mobile & responsive designs as much as you’d like, as long as you’re not changing the content, URL, and internal links. The more user friendly you can make your website, the better your chances of ranking will be.
Updating your website to improve page speed
You can, and should, be consistently monitoring and improving your website’s page speed. You can update elements on your site to improve page speed multiple times a day. Replacing images with next-gen image formats is a great way to improve your website’s speed without getting into the weeds of core web vitals.
How often should you fix your core web vitals?
Ensuring that your core web vitals are exceeding Google’s requirements is essential to a better user experience. You can update any of the core web vitals metrics as often as you’d like. We suggest testing new pages as soon as you launch them to fix any core web vital issues. CWVs are a subset of factors that are a part of Google’s “page experience” score.
Update frequency by website types:
- Blog/news websites
- Ecommerce shops
- Service based websites
There is no point in updating your website unless you have a reason to do so. Crafting a solid and consistent SEO strategy is vital to your online success regardless of the type of business you run.
Blogs / News Website Update Frequency
A blog or news website generally makes money from advertising, affiliate sales, or selling your products or services. With that in mind, we will take a look at your website update cadence.
How often should you update your blog/news site?
Update as often as possible while maintaining quality.
We’ve worked with a few clients who update their site daily but with very “thin” content. Meaning each piece of content is less than 300 words. Some of these clients have 200,000+ to 1M+ followers across their social accounts but have yet to see a significant amount of traffic generated from posting “thin” content.
In this case, posting more frequently will likely not yield you many results from an SEO standpoint. However, with the right size social media following, it may yield significant traffic. (although we’re not holding our breath)
Unless you have a bunch of cash and a team of writers, we recommend posting once or twice per day. The caveat is that your content should be more in-depth (1,000+ words) and that you do some basic keyword research before writing to determine if your topic is a viable option to increase your website traffic.
Case Study:
When running a publication receiving 4M+ website visitors per month, we had a team of writers pumping out 6 to 10 articles PER DAY. At the time, we thought this was necessary to maintain that insane amount of monthly traffic; however, after about a year of 6 – 10 posts per day, we could concentrate our efforts on 3 – 4 higher-quality pieces of content that yielded us almost the same results. (and saved the company a ton of money!)
eCommerce Website Update Frequency
The purpose of having an online store is to sell products, whether physical or virtual. There are several ways you can drive traffic to your eCommerce shop: SEO, Social Media, Paid Advertising, Referrals, and email marketing.
How often should you update your eCommerce site?
If you’re only using paid media to drive traffic to your products, you do not need to update your website often; however we highly recommend putting together an SEO strategy to help drive users to your site for free.
How often should you update existing products?
When it comes to existing products, we recommend updating your product descriptions once per month if you’re not receiving your fair share of traffic to those products. If you already rank #1 for your most significant search term, do NOT touch anything on that product page. You should, however, be keeping an eye on your rankings every month, whether or not you’re updating that content.
How often should you add new products to your eCommerce shop?
You can add new products to your site as frequently as you’d like as long as you’re not adding products and removing them shortly after. You need to give SEO time to work.
The only caveat here is that your backlinking strategy may need to change if you have more products than you originally anticipated. Again, if you’re primarily driving traffic to your shop via paid ads, don’t worry about how often you’re updating your site.
Should you add blog posts to your eCommerce site?
Yes! You’ll want to publish new content (blogs) at least once per week.
We recommend doing this as there are a lot of users looking for help with products in your space. You may be able to sway customers to purchase from you instead of a competitor by providing them with helpful blog content relating to your product.
Here are some examples of blog content for eCommerce shops:
A shop selling Lightroom Presets
- “How to install Lightroom Presets”
- “How to export Lightroom Presets for social media”
- “Can you use Lightroom Presets in Photoshop?”
A shop selling biltong (A cured meat)
- “Biltong Vs. Beef Jerky”
- “What is Biltong?”
- “5 health benefits of Biltong”
A shop selling premium men’s clothing
- “5 summer wedding clothing tips”
- “How to match your shoes with your belt and suit”
- “The ten best free places to take wedding photos in Toronto”
A shop selling hot sauce
- “How to pair your hot sauce with wine”
- “The best hot sauce for Wings”
- “5 foods that don’t mix with hot sauce”
A shop selling digital recording and mixing courses
- “5 mixing tips to get massive bass tones”
- “10 vocal mixing tips”
- “How to mix in mono”
At this point, it should be pretty evident that you can write helpful blog content for pretty much any industry. If you’re still having trouble coming up with blog ideas for your eCommerce shop, it may be time to bring in an advertising agency to help you with that!
Service-Based Website Update Frequency
Like eCommerce websites, you can drive traffic to your service-based website through SEO, social media, paid advertising, referrals, and email marketing.
How often should you update your service-based website?
If your customer acquisition strategy is primarily focused on paid media, you don’t need to worry about updating your website frequently. With that in mind, SEO is a way to drive free traffic to your services, and it’s why we strongly recommend using SEO for service-based businesses.
How often should you update existing services?
In short, once per month. Any more and you won’t know what’s working or hurting your search rankings. To prevent spammers from messing with their algorithm, Google doesn’t instantly update your search rankings when you update your website. We have found that the sweet spot is about once per month.
If you’re already ranking highly for your biggest search term, do NOT touch anything on that service page. You should, however, be keeping an eye on your rankings every month, whether or not you’re updating that content.
How often should you add new services to your website?
As often as you’d like, as long as those services are something you offer.
Should you add blog posts to your service-based site?
Yes! You’ll want to publish new content (blogs) at least once per month.
We recommend adding new blog content once per month for a few reasons:
- Updating your website tells Google’s algorithm that you’re maintaining and updating your website, which can help your content rank higher.
- Adding new blog posts to your website will help you rank for more keywords.
- If you set the bar too high in terms of the number of posts per month, you may feel overwhelmed and put out subpar content.
- Establishing a consistent posting cadence will positively impact your search rankings.
Here are some examples of blog content for service-based websites:
Dental Office
- “Tips for brushing your teeth with braces”
- “What is plaque?”
- “Why you should floss once per day”
General contractor:
- “How to care for your new deck”
- “How to clean your tile without ruining the grout”
- “5 things to look for in a general contractor”
Physiotherapist
- “5 signs you need physiotherapy”
- “10 back stretches that help with back pain”
- “4 stretches to do every morning”
Therapist/Counselor
- “5 ways to deal with anxiety at home”
- “How to find the right counselor for you”
- “Couples Counseling for happy couples”
Advertising Agency
- How to get your photos on Google Images
- Local SEO checklist
- 100 SEO Tools to improve your search engine rankings
- How to use Schema Markup for SEO
With all these examples, you can write helpful blog content regardless of which type of services you provide. If you’ve tried writing original blog content and are experiencing writer’s block, it may be time to give us a call!
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