I receive many questions about which are better: a blog or a regular static website. Often times, they have heard that blogs are more Google-friendly than a regular website. Everyone has probably read that Google loves blogs. Well, that is true, but there is nothing inherent about blogs that Google loves.
The truth about blogs is that they usually get updated more often and they usually have more content than a regular static website. It’s that content, and the updating of the content, that Google appreciates. They like lots of content and fresh content. If one were to create a static website and a blog on the same topic and write fresh content on a regular basis for the blog and fresh content on a regular basis for the website, they would be on absolutely equal footings. In other words, there is nothing about the structure of a blog site that makes it more SEO friendly to Google than a regular static website. It’s just that adding content is far easier and far quicker; therefore, more content is usually placed on the blog compared to a static website.
Now, for smaller niches, it’s not necessary to constantly update your content in order to stay ranking well. I have many sites that have been indexed by Google for three or four years and I have made absolutely no changes to those websites and they still rank on the first pages from the keywords that I optimized for back then. However, if you’re in a very highly competitive area, such as weight loss, home mortgages, insurance, or dating, then more work is required to maintain your rankings. This is because there are countless other sites constantly using SEO and trying to rank on that first page also.
Since Google does appreciate fresh content, when you’re in competition with all the other sites, if your content is fresh and optimized on a regular basis, then you have an advantage over those other sites. It’s very important to remember. And there is something else where beginners often times find themselves in trouble. They do hear that updating the content is important; however, let’s say you have a small niche website in a small area, and it’s ranking very well. You believe that it’s important to go in and change the content on a regular basis. This can actually hurt your site. You may be ranking very high in Google. Changing the content may inadvertently change the way Google sees your site, therefore, dropping you off of the first page. That happens all the time. If your niche is small, and your page is ranking well, do not modify the page.
If your page is ranking, say, on position number eight or nine, and you wish to move up, the safest way to do that is to get more original content and add more pages to your site. Then you can have multiple pages ranking well for the same keywords.