Call it whatever you want… Blogs, Articles, News, Whitepapers, etc.  One of the most important things that website owners need to do is continuously and regularly add content to your websites and blogs.  Otherwise, they will join the ranks of millions of other sites out there that had a blogging revelation one day about spreading the word about something… did it for a week and haven’t touched it since.  And I’m not sitting here pointing fingers, as I am horrible at it.  Personally, I have maybe 3-4 blogs out there that were created, updated for a couple weeks/months, and haven’t been touched in years.  That’s the absolute worst thing you can do for finding/keeping an active readership and showing up in Google searches.  I’ll explain below.

Quick Story…

Last night, I’m sitting at the office about to wrap things up for the night.  I’m on Gmail and a friend has her blog’s website address listed as her status.  I’ve read her blog before and consider myself a follower, checking it every week or so. Her style is funny and it’s entertaining.  Here’s the Blog: http://ayobatime.wordpress.com/  The past couple times I’ve visited the site, the latest post was a story that I already read… and I quickly left her blog to check another day.  I obviously took note that her last blog post was on November 4st (27 days ago) and subconsciously made myself aware that I don’t need to check her blog again for another month, whereas I used to be on a weekly check schedule.  Big Mistake!

I proceeded to send a G-chat over that said "Whens the next blog post? You’re slacking!"

But here’s the kicker… after sending that G-chat I realized it has been awhile since my last Mint Media blog post.  And truth is, Damn it, my last post was on November 1st… 30 days ago!  I’m a bigger culprit and am now kicking myself for it.  I’m caught up in the same mess once again.  For example, go look at the dates of all my blog posts.  As time goes on, more time passes between each post.  That’s the worst thing that I could be doing to Mint Media’s website.

WHY, you might ask?

Well, there are about 174,908,428 theories and arguments floating around the internet, but I am going to tell you about 2 PROVEN ones.

2 Topics to Discuss – Google and Retaining Readership

First, Google.  There are only 3 people in the world that know the exact Google formula for showing up in the highest spots on the Google results page, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, and Sergey Brin.  However, over the years, I’ve figured out parts of the formula and, implemented them, and it works.  I’ll give you the SEARCH 101 version right now.

Google has a thing called a spider that “crawls” every website over a given period of time.  Big websites like ESPN.com get crawled constantly.  Most get crawled every few days.  Some get crawled monthly.  Others don’t get crawled because the information hasn’t been changed or added to in years, therefore no longer relevant. Mint Media get crawled every 2 to 4 days.  If you want to know how to find this out, call me.  Not going into it right now.   

So, when this so-called spider crawls your website, they “index” your website every time and learn a bunch of information, pretty much everything about the site.  When it was last updated? What links you refer to on your site (called Backlinks)? What keywords are being used? How many people visited that site since the last crawl? And thousands of other data pieces that they plug into this secret formula.  However, the ones listed above are some of the most important.  Google is looking for relevance.  What is the content? How new is the information? Are lots of people reading this?  Are people sharing this? Etc. The more positive results the higher you show up when someone searches given keywords (Remember when Google took an inventory of our keywords?)  Get it?

The easiest way to overcome this is to get on a schedule.  Post a new story every Tuesday and stick to it.  Done, you’re relevant to Google.  Simple, right? 

The second proven method does not include any insects.  It’s actually just human nature and our unique ability to kill time. Retaining Readership. 

An example – Groupon has 1 new post each day… and I go there 1 time EVERY DAY. There is a sports blog that posts 10+ times a day… and I go there about 5 times EVERY DAY.  There’s a tech blog that posts 40+ times a day… and I go there 10+ times EVERY DAY.    Facebook statuses are updated 100’s of times each day… and I go there WAY TOO MUCH.  Get it.  See the trend?  You learn a website’s posting schedule.  I know how frequently new information becomes available and visit their site accordingly to see the new stuff.

For Mint Media, I hope to give the impression that there is a new post once a week to get people coming to my website about, well, once a week.  That is all I need.  However, someone that came to my website last night would have noted that my last post was 30 days ago.  Therefore, subconsciously, they now think they only need to come to www.MintMediaAgency.com once a month.  And I’m hoping that they come once a week.  Do you see disconnect?  That is a big problem at Mint Media Headquarters if people aren’t regularly coming to the website.  Big Problems.  Someone might be getting fired for this one.

Anyhow, that is my 101 version on the importance of blogging.  I could talk about Search Engine Optimization for hours, as some of my Mint Media clients know that first-hand.  If you want to learn more or would like to hire Mint Media to help your business show up in Google.  You know where to find me. 

And don’t forget to check my blog and my friend’s blog ONCE A WEEK!!!  http://ayobatime.wordpress.com/

 P.S. See how I included her website’s name on my website. Google spider will take notice next time it crawls my site and helps grow her "Google Ranking." It’s called a Backlink. Happy sharing, People.