SEO – Staying Fresh

Staying Fresh

Website content is a lot like produce at the market.

The fresher the better, and, if you’re providing the same exact thing as the competition, whether it’s granny smith apples or information about buying a car, you need to stand out as being the highest quality or offer a different taste.  If your material is old and rotting, no one will want to look at it for long.

Imagine yourself at a farmer’s market.  Each stand is selling apples.  How do you pick from one vendor and not another?  Do you go to the first stand, closest to the entrance, or do you look for the best quality produce?  Is customer service important to you, sending you to the vendor that you have a personal relationship with?

Using SEO properly will get you that prime real estate at the entrance to the Internet marketplace, but both Google and your customers will figure out pretty quickly if you are selling something phony or if the quality of your goods is sub par.  Keeping content updated but with irrelevant or outdated search terms for your ranking class will not help for long.  Traffic will go elsewhere.

Social networking is where you can score points with the customers looking for the best service.  Maintain a relationship with your customers by letting them know what is going on with your company. Regularly updating a blog (which also boosts your SEO) and your social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter is a great way to do this.  Depending on the nature of your business, this is where you can add the personal touch. Zappos and JetBlue  are well known for regularly updating social media networks with company information and irreverent comments or uplifting quotes.  Let your unique style grab their attention.

Think carefully about how staying fresh fits into your overall company image and business plan.  Are you targeting a specific niche, like organic tomatoes?  Or do your customers like you because of the variety that you offer?  Be sure that you’re constantly rotating in new stock, but don’t lose sight of what the customers are coming to you for in the first place.

By: Ilene Rosenblum