What is “fresh” content for SEO? A quick guide for ecommerce

Creating content that both satisfies users and search engines is no easy task. You need to publish content to your site that potential customers will find interesting enough to stick around, but that also fulfills whatever criteria search crawlers are looking for.

The way to balance the two is to create useful content. And one way your content can be considered useful is if in certain circumstances, it’s considered “fresh”.

So what does “fresh” content actually mean? And how can ecommerce merchants create fresh content for their store?

What does “fresh” content mean?

Content “freshness” refers to how recent a piece of content is. However, it doesn’t just mean that a piece of content was published recently, but its relevance to time sensitive topics. For example, in ecommerce you could publish a blog about how to properly care for a pair of hiking shoes. Just because it was published recently, doesn’t necessarily mean it would be considered “fresh”. However, if you published a gift guide for an upcoming holiday then that would be considered fresh because it’s related to a time sensitive topic people are searching for. 

Content freshness in itself is not a ranking factor, but it does play a role in how search results for certain queries are displayed. Google primarily looks for relevant, useful content which provides a great user experience. Fresh content for these time sensitive topics would be considered relevant and useful to their users. For example, freshness matters when you’re searching for news about a current event, but less so if you’re looking for a recipe. In fact, in the latter case, you’d probably want a recipe that’s been tried-and-tested over a long period of time by many site users. 

“Fresh” vs “frequent” content

Which is more important - publishing fresh content, or frequently publishing new content? The answer, thankfully, is neither - they’re both important but for different reasons. As an ecommerce merchant, you won’t always have topics to write about that would be considered “fresh”. If there isn’t an upcoming holiday, for example, then most of what you’re going to write will be considered evergreen content. That is, content which is relevant regardless of the time of year or time sensitivity. 

So if “fresh” content focusses on how recent content is, “frequent” of course focusses on how often content is published. In this case, it makes sense to focus on creating content and publishing it frequently. That doesn’t necessarily mean every day, but with some regularity. It can be a mix of short and long format content - so that might be a short-form blog article about a new product, or a long-form landing page that acts as a guide on how to do something with your products. 

How to create fresh content for ecommerce SEO

1 - Create seasonal content year-round

One easy way to stay fresh year-round is to create a seasonal content calendar pinpointing the events throughout the year most relevant to your brand. That includes holidays such as Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, 4th of July, Christmas, and so on. As well as any product or industry specific things for example if you sell casual swimwear then summertime may be most relevant to your brand, and you can create seasonal content around that. There will also be events for which you can create content like Black Friday/Cyber Monday. 

For these events, you can create buying and gift guides, content hub landing pages, FAQs, and more. These will attract search users who are searching for these time-sensitive queries, providing them with fresh, useful content.  

2 - Use recent questions and user-generated content

One way to understand what’s most relevant to your customers at any given moment is the kind of questions they’re asking about your brand or products right now. Are they searching for ways to style a particular product? Are there support tickets about how to use a specific seasonal product or asking about when to expect a seasonal sale event? What items are your customers posting about on social media?

You can use these to create blog articles and other content that’s timely, and relevant. You can combine this with seasonal content too, for example if it’s wintertime and you see a lot of questions about weatherproofing hiking shoes or how to adapt your skincare routine to winter. 

3 - Stay on top of trends to create interesting content

Knowing what’s going viral online will help you to create fresh content for your store. For example, if your product has gained an audience through TikTok, or a certain product type you also sell is currently trending on Instagram. You can create temporary collections in your store such as “As seen on TikTok” or “Trending right now” with the relevant products. 

As for blog content, you can do much the same type of product recommendations but with more content around it. For example if a particular bag is trending on TikTok, then it could be “5 ways to style the viral [product name] bag”.

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Knowing the kind of content to create that will both benefit your SEO and engage your audience can be tricky. By thinking of ways to categorize your content, you can better fulfill both needs. Regularly posting a mix of evergreen, seasonal, and fresh content, you’ll have a strong strategy that targets search users no matter the time of year or trends they’re interested in.