Fresh Content to Help Your Site Grow
http://blog.getevents.co/2014/10/fresh-content-to-help-your-site-grow/
Do you want to increase visitors' time on your blog/website and make sure they keep coming back? Planting fresh content in one of six ways will surely help your site grow.
Like most blog owners, one of your first concerns is how to get traffic to your site. You are probably interested in ways to not only give quality and timely information to your site visitors, but also how to keep them on your site longer for engagement and how to retain those visitors by getting them to return to your URL again and again.
You could take the time learn about and to engage in now passé SEO website tricks that could give you results, but one of the best tried-and-true ways is to give your visitors fresh content.
Fresh content is:
New and updated information
Engaging for the reader
Potentially viral-- the reader feels compelled to Share, Like, or Tweet it
Answering WIFM ("What's In It For Me?")-- your readers want to see a reason to invest their time and clicks on visiting your site (and you want them to see the value of returning)
"Evergreen"-- always relevant, but with a new twist or update
Not just a link that has been posted all over the internet (Google won't like it and it will lower your search results, anyway)
Driving search rankings and the overall authority for your website
Increasing visitors' time on your website or blog
The amount of time a visitor spends on your site correlates with your site's success. The longer someone spends on your site, the higher the chance that s/he will engage in comments, like or share, make a purchase, or learn in a way that meets their needs. The addition of fresh content on your site can help ensure that a visitor will be compelled to stick around; thus, growing your numbers.
Give your visitors a reason to keep coming back
Your website visitors/audience/customers won't want to come back to your site if you don't offer something new for them. And you know what?-- search engines (*cough* Google) won't, either.
Visitor retention rates are important not only for analyzing who defects from your site and why (so you can know your audience better or make necessary improvements to your blog site, service, or product), but also because as you successfully retain visitors, you increase your opportunities for more income (if you sell something on your site), or overall popularity.
Fresh Content Ideas for You
"Content is king." It might seem cliché, but nonetheless, it still rings true. If you want to implement adding some fresh content to your website, here are a few good ideas to plant:
A Blog
If you are already blogging-- great! You just need to be sure to cultivate it. If you have a fashion e-commerce site or a vlog where you give cosmetics tips and tricks, you should consider adding a blog to your repertoire.
A blog doesn't have to be a tedious, time-consuming, boring channel for sharing information. Your blog can be engaging, fun, and anything you want it to be! The key is that you are in control of the content you share, and you should use it to give your readers not only news about your point of view, affiliate products, services, or niche, but also updates about you, industry news, and content that will solve problems for them.
Blog about an advancement with your favorite products, brag about your milestones, share some "Did You Know?" posts, add pictures of yourself in action, add a dash of your personality to it. You are in total control of your blog, and you'll know the content is fresh because it came directly from you.
Once you have your blog up and running, you need to make a commitment to it. Your loyal readers will come to expect fresh content from you regularly.
"If you want to continually grow your blog, you need to learn to blog on a
consistent basis."
–Neil Patel
A Social Media Feed
You've done your due diligence to set up and manage your social media accounts-- why not add them to a relevant page on your site? Twitter posts, Facebook and Google+ comments, Pinterest pins, LinkedIn posts, Hashtags, and all matter of Shares are constant sources of fresh content. The new information you share will be picked up by search engines that will want to crawl (and index) your site.
An RSS Newsfeed
An RSS (Rich Site Summary; some people refer to it as Really Simple Syndication) news feed automatically publishes syndicated data on your site. The news feed aggregates relevant news and information in categories that you choose to share with your site visitors. As this content is constantly refreshed, you can see why someone would be compelled to bookmark your site to stay in-the-know.
If you have a WordPress site, you can easily add an RSS Newsfeed with a widget.
FAQs
FAQs are Frequently Asked Questions. Take the initiative to put together a list of questions or concerns visitors might have about yourself, your POV, your style aesthetic; products, any service you provide, or an area of interest-- it's not only valuable content, but as you update it, the content will be fresh, too. A FAQ page on your website is also a great form of online customer service, allows for user engagement with you, and can save you and visitors time when you anticipate and also address their needs head-on.
Testimonials/Reviews
Establish yourself as an authority in your area with testimonials. Each time you receive positive feedback, add this fresh content to your testimonials page. Embed tweets with reviews. Add quotes and screenshots.
If your site offers goods or services, you know that testimonials and reviews influence 86% of potential customers' decisions to either buy or not buy. Harvesting this information can yield a very positive impact on your site's numbers... and those in your financial bottom-line.
Talkback/Visitor Comments
The best way to engage online with your visitors is via talkbacks/visitor comments, and it is an excellent source of fresh content, made green almost entirely by your readers. You will need to tend to the comments timely and professionally, but the impact on your engagement efforts is worth it.
So roll up your sleeves, cultivate your site's garden with some fresh content, and everything will come up roses as your user engagement, time on site, and retention numbers grow!