Organic search traffic is still very valuable to most businesses. One study found that 70% of marketers rate SEO as being more important than PPC. 

Unfortunately, getting organic search traffic is a lot more difficult than it used to be. This is a problem for companies that can’t rank well in the SERPs, because 67% of all organic search traffic is awarded to the first five listings on Google.

Companies need to be aware of all factors that influence search engine rankings. One factor that does not get much discussion is fresh content. 

A variety of case studies have shown that fresh content plays an important role in boosting search engine rankings. Google first applied for a patent back in 2003, which was meant to evaluate historical data of different websites. This new technology has enabled google to identify changes in content across any website. They provide better rankings to websites that continually put out fresh content. 

This is important information for any business to be aware of if they are trying to improve their SERPS. Unfortunately, many companies don’t know how to use fresh content properly. They often make small content upgrades solely to boost their SEO. 

The truth is that making small changes to existing webpages won’t do you much good. A much better strategy is to maintain a blog and add new posts to it consistently. 

Here are some reasons that when building a blog, focusing on fresh content is superior to making small updates to existing pages. 

You constantly have new pages earning a freshness ranking

Google has not clearly revealed how it ranks different webpages. However, Moz and other digital marketing leaders have shown that pages tend to rank best shortly after they are first published. They might rank 10 times better than an average webpage for a brief period.  After a little bit of time passes, they might notice the freshness benefit drops by 90%. Over time, the webpage will start to rank better again, but will never have the same freshness benefit that it originally had. 

This benefit appears to only be awarded to brand new pages. You won’t get a freshness score advantage by merely updating existing content.

This is one of the reasons that blogging is a much better practice. You will constantly be creating new pages, which will get this freshness benefit. 

You can build far more internal links through blogging 

Internal linking is a very important and often overlooked part of SEO. Websites that have lots of internal links will rank a lot better. This is one of the reasons that Wikipedia ranks so well. It has millions of pages of content, each of which has numerous links to other pages. 

You won’t be able to create a very good internal linking strategy if you only have a few pages. The easiest way to build lots of internal links without triggering a spam filter is through blogging. 

You can create post surround fresh topics with trending keywords 

Some of the content on your website is going to be evergreen. Other webpages are going to be focused on trending topics. 

A blog can cover a lot of different topics, including more newsworthy events. You will have an easier time creating fresh content around topical ideas and write keywords around them. 

Google can see through effortless attempts to upgrade content 

Google understands that many people try to exploit their algorithms. They read articles from the Google Webmaster Blog or other SEO related websites to understand the best practices. Then they try to adjust their strategies accordingly. 

Google has become very proficient at identifying these people that try to game the system. The same holds for people trying to make it look like their website is creating fresh content. They can tell whether or not the website is making very small contact upgrades to mimic fresh content. It will be very little benefit to this and these sites could even be penalized.

Google has become very proficient at identifying these people that try to game the system. The same holds for people trying to make it look like their website is creating fresh content. They can tell whether or not a website is making very small content upgrades to mimic fresh content. There will be very little benefit to this and these sites could even be penalized. 

Blogging is clearly a much better way to generate fresh content. Google can tell that you are being sincere about publishing fresh content and will award you for it. 

Blogging is the key to your fresh content strategy 

Fresh content is a crucial part of search engine optimization. You need to generate fresh content the right way. Running a blog will be much more effective than making simple content upgrades.