Freshness
Nobody is going to read your site if you don’t have fresh content on a regular basis. After all, if the content doesn’t change, what motivation is there for people to return? And if you don’t have a steady traffic flow, your business is going to suffer. Nobody wants their business to suffer, so fresh content is absolutely essential. Of course, that doesn’t mean that coming up with a consistent variety of fresh content is easy. On the contrary, it will probably be one of the biggest challenges you face.
Coming up with consistently fresh and interesting content is hard work. It takes time to think up a great topic, do the research and then write an original piece. While doing the research for your topic, you’ll probably come across two or three articles that say exactly what you want to say and the temptation to simply copy the article and paste it into your own site will be great. It is, of course, a temptation you should resist. Not only is that blatant plagiarism and could land you in a heap of trouble with the original author, but it could end up hurting your business on the internet as well.
Google has an army of web crawlers whose sole purpose is to scour the web and look for duplicate content. When the crawlers find the duplicate content, all of the websites displaying it get dinged in the Google ratings system. A black mark on your business record is the last thing you want.
It might also be tempting to use Content Creation software. This is software that you can buy and download. The way it works is this: you put in the topic of your article, a few key words and phrases and then the different angles from which you want to present the angles and let the software do the rest of the work. In a short time you can have hundreds of pieces written; all cribbed from other articles on the internet but designed to thwart plagiarism checking software.
This too, should be avoided. Content Creation software might save you a lot of time, but it’s easily spotted and will greatly detract from the over all “voice” of your business website.
When you create fresh content on a consistent basis, you begin to develop the “voice” of your website. This “voice” is what sets your business apart from the other businesses of the same niche. It is the voice that will help you brand and market your website. If your business voice is flat and sounds like regurgitated rhetoric, even if you have a new article up every hour, the visitors will flee because your authenticity is nowhere to be found.
It is always best to write your own fresh content. It reflects positively on your business that you are putting the in the time and effort to make something real. It is what will set you apart from all of the other businesses on the vast internet.
