How Is SEO Like A Campfire?

You want your website to show up in the search results, right?

So you optimize your website, or you hire a search engine optimization firm to take care of the details for you.

But then you hear that you ought to have a blog on your website. You can write and publish blog posts, or your SEO team can handle this for you (at an extra cost of course)!

Here’s a recent conversation…

Client: “If you’re doing our SEO, why do we have to keep writing blog posts.”

Me: “Why? Because you want to save money. We can write the blog posts for you, but then you’ll have to pay more.”

Client: “No, I mean, you’re optimizing our site, so isn’t that enough? Why bother with the blog at all?”

Ah, now they are getting to the real question! That question is, “Why is it important to continually add new content to a website?”

The Answer In A Campfire

I had to come up with an answer that would be completely clear and easy to understand. Here is the idea that popped…

1. The content of a website is the fuel for SEO. In other words, the content is represented by the logs in the campfire. 
   • Search engine optimization can start with any website — small or large. But the larger the site, the more content there is to work with, and the more fuel to burn.
   • So each new blog post is like throwing another log on the fire.
   • The bigger the blog post, the more fuel it provides. (There’s not much SEO value in a 100-word blog post!)
2. Search engine optimization is the spark that gets the fire going.
   • If the search engines don’t like the website, there is no fire, no visibility.
   • So the initial SEO changes the site from a pile of logs to a burning pile of logs.
3. Continued SEO fans the flames.
   • The follow-up question is, “Why do we have to continue SEO month after month?” It’s to keep the fire burning.
   • If you stop paying attention to the fire, it will eventually go out.

Going back to the initial question, “Why is it important to continually add new content to a website?” Because if you only have your base website, there’s nothing left to burn. The original pages of your site that were built with little content were ashes long ago.

For a successful SEO project to get a site visible in the search results and keep it there, you have to have the logs, the spark, something to fan the flames, and new logs to keep the fire burning. In other words, you need the website, good SEO, continued attention, and more content.

Comfortable Burn Versus Raging Fire

There is one more thing you can do to the campfire. If you’re not happy with the speed at which it burns, you can pour gasoline on it! Whoosh!

In this case, I am referring to social media. If you have already built a fire for your website and then you add social media, you can move your site beyond search rankings.

These days, not only can social signals boost your website in search results, but they can also make search results less relevant. After all, if your prospects already know you, they don’t have to do a search when they are ready to do business.

Photo: “Campfire” by Steven Miller is licensed under CC BY 2.0 / cropped from the original.