Creating a news feed for your website can result in tangible benefits, but it’s essential to update it frequently. A news feed with out-of-date information will be of little interest to readers, and search engines tend to prefer websites with frequently updated content. It’s not an exact science, but the prevailing wisdom suggests you should update a news feed or blog at least once a week.
You could of course write content yourself, or maybe you could delegate it to someone else, but this can lead to issues. Firstly, you need to take time away from your core duties to research and write interesting news pieces and articles for your website news feed. During a particularly hectic week, it’s quite likely that your regular news update will be sacrificed in favour of more urgent duties.
Even if you and your employees do have the time to write content, is it something you really want to do? If writing news articles seems like a drag, it will likely lead to poor-quality content. Quality is important to content marketing, so this is something you need to maintain. A recent study by Acrolinx, a provider of content marketing software, surveyed the content of 340 companies in 31 countries and evaluated it for technical correctness and clarity. Based on their own experience in content marketing, the researchers estimated that companies need a content impact score of at least 72 (out of 100). Unfortunately, less than a third of the companies studied met this target, indicating that many are sacrificing quality in favour of quantity.
Other studies have also highlighted the continuing importance of correct spelling and grammar. For example, in a poll of 1,029 UK adults conducted by Global Lingo, 59% of people said they “wouldn’t trust” a website with poor grammar and obvious spelling errors to provide a good service. Another 31% of people had visited websites that had been poorly translated from a foreign language, but only 4% of these people continued to use such websites.
This insistence on good grammar isn’t limited to older generations either. In a survey by Dictionary.com, 74% of 18–34 year olds said they were bothered by poor grammar in social media posts. What’s more, an article in The Wall Street journal pointed out that grammar and spelling can also affect people’s chances of success on dating websites.
In addition to putting off your human visitors, search engines are becoming increasingly aware of poor quality content. While search engines don’t directly evaluate the spelling and grammar of websites – at least not yet – poor spelling and grammar can be classed as giving a poor user experience. This means that better written websites will usually outperform similar websites with poorly written content.
Given all the above factors, it would certainly be wise to outsource your website news feed to a professional news writing service. Not only will this free up you and your staff to work on other things, you can be assured that you will be getting good quality, up-to-date content on time, every time.
- New report hints how content can be successful - June 19, 2018
- Improve your web presence with help from Google - April 18, 2018
- Complementing your content marketing strategy with email - March 7, 2018
