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Website Sin Number One - Infrequent Updates

One of the worst things you can do if you are planning to improve your visitor return rate is to not update your content.

… just ignore the date on the last entry and stay with me here.

Think about it. Do you consistently go back to a website that never updates? I sure don’t, especially not when there’s little content to begin with. You need fresh content to keep your repeat visitors interested and to assure the new visitors that they’re not reading old news.

On the other hand, you don’t want to update for the sake of updating. A bunch of boring articles or uninteresting news posts and people will begin to assume that the updates will continue in that manner.

What I’ve been trying to do lately for some of my other blogs is set up automatic posting. With an article queue, at least I can be assured that something will be updated. Of course this won’t work with a news blog, unless your readers enjoy last week’s news-bites.

Another idea is to just set aside thirty minutes to an hour each week per website for either content writing or general updates. Generally speaking, each of my fandom sites has a particular day when I make sure that any necessary updating is done. (Guess which blog was not on that list *cough*)

With a little work, frequent updating and fresh content can keep visitors returning.

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