Information speed: traveling at the speed of digital

Web hosting, online news and information

In case you haven’t noticed, your morning paper is dwindling. The techniques of publication and dissemination of information used during the last 300 years are giving way to new technologies: digital technology or the world wide web.

Go ahead and check this morning’s paper. No piece of information is “today”. It’s yesterday’s news. Sure, for local stories, newspapers still provide broader and more detailed coverage. And you get sports news, comics, a crossword puzzle, and a bunch of coupons that more than pay for the cost of a newspaper subscription.

But it’s still yesterday’s news.

Today, you can switch to the 24-hour news channel of your choice and watch a California car chase (why is it always California?) as it happens. Information is delivered immediately, at the speed of digital.

However, there are numerous blogs and websites that publish news events as they happen, again outpacing traditional media in many cases. Today, people expect up-to-the-minute information. And they want it now!

What’s new?

Now, not all websites require hourly news updates. Maggiesknittingsupplies.com probably doesn’t need up-to-date reports on the world of knitting. I mean, how much does it change from one day to the next?

But that doesn’t mean Maggie should hire a copywriter for her site, lay out her sales pitch, and hope for the best. If she’s a savvy businesswoman (let’s assume she is) providing articles on yarn types, online lessons for beginners, information on other crafts, visitors will continue to visit Maggiesknittingsupplies.com for information and, at some point, they will make a purchase.

Let’s call this slow speed news.

• Change.
• Encourage repeat visitors and build a community on the site.
• Create goodwill among members who mark the site as “family” members.
• Sets the authority of the site owner. You are the teacher, guru or mentor.
• It provides a useful service to the visitor by educating them.
• Prequalify visitors to provide a better educated prospect, ready to convert from browser to buyer.
• It makes search engines happy.

Search engine robots visit your site regularly. In fact, you can tell search engines how often to crawl your site. Google’s default is once every 30 days, but that’s an external number. Most sites are crawled in seven days.

When the site is crawled, a snapshot is taken. This is the hidden view that appears on search engine results pages. The cached view is what the search engine saw the last time the site was crawled, which could be two or three weeks ago.

And for many website owners, changing the text is not a critical factor in the success of the site. You can program your site’s code to tell bots that the text will never change. This way, you won’t be penalized for the lack of new content.

You see, when a search engine bot goes by and crawls your site, it compares the most recent information on the site against the cached view: the snapshot that was taken the last time the site was crawled. If the text is identical and you haven’t told the search engine that your site’s text won’t change (part of the HTML or XML code used to create the presentation layer that people actually see), your site will lose rank in the SERPs. . for outdated content.

The reason? Search engines are in the business of delivering the most relevant links to the most relevant websites based on the keywords entered by search engine users. Well, if nothing has changed in your “up-to-the-minute stock analysis” in two weeks, search engine algorithms file you in the negative ranking category and your SERP link remains on page 154.

When was the last time YOU visited page 154 of the search engine results pages? As never before. Search engine users rarely go beyond the second or third page during a web search. If they can’t find the information or product they’re looking for on one of the top-ranked websites, they often start another search using different keywords, which can land you on page 876 of the Google SERPs, since the prospect didn’t make it. a keyword that your site is optimized for.

Who needs to be up to date?

Well, any site can increase the speed of information if the site owner is smart. Do you want some examples?

Okay, a blog can be created with a few clicks and has an immediate output to deliver current news, occasional news, allow site visitors to reply to blog posts, and build a community of loyal followers and customers.

A local restaurant, optimized for local search, can post not only the full menu, but also that day’s specials. News every day, and the kind of news site that visitors will use again and again before deciding where to eat that night.

A certified financial planner can calculate stock prices in real time to keep visitors online all day. However, these CFPs may publish market winners and losers, movers and shakers sales volume, and other financial news of interest to CFA’s local client base.

An oil and gas junior can post real-time videos of activity in the field. It’s like watching a real estate show and builds confidence in the start-up.

5 ways to increase the speed of information on your website

Add an RSS feed.

RSS it stands for far-end syndication and simply delivers news on a specific topic at the speed of digital. Maggie (of Maggiesknittingsupplies.com) might add an RSS feed because she enters keywords for the information she wants to send to her site visitors. Maggie enters “knitting” and gets the latest knitting news (I can only assume there must be some news in the fast-paced world of crafts).

You will need a feed aggregator that collects RSS feeds from different sources like Google, Yahoo News, or the New York Stock Exchange. Expect to pay for some feeds, but there are plenty of freebies and even paid RSS feeds are dirt cheap.

Add a Blog.

Blogs are great because they are simple and allow the site owner to update the content of the site without calling the developer.

Blog posts can be as current as now. Listen to something or read something and you can write a 400 word post and tell your site visitors the latest.

Add live video streams.

Live video streaming of the spacewalk, chess tournament, sports news, whatever brings visitors to your site. Search for “live video streams” using a search engine and simply link to the stream. It takes a couple of clicks and your site is up to date.

Please note that bots cannot crawl video or graphic content. However, add a
HTML tag that tells the bot what’s in the video feed and it’ll get a little extra credit.

Add real-time updates within your site news.

A savvy site owner at confidenttrader.com sells a micro-cap stock picking service. He maintains a stock portfolio that any visitor can view. No “opt-in” is required.

Every day, the stock prices in the portfolio are updated, providing site owner subscribers and prospects with immediate updates on their own stock portfolio that parallels the owner of confidenttrader.com.

This keeps site visitors coming back every day to check out their own portfolios because all the relevant information has been aggregated on a single page of a website – a real time saver.

Now this kind of information is not free for the micro cap stocks site owner. You pay for the service, but you also provide a valuable service to your subscribers, and the cost of the latest information is included in the subscription price.

This daily update attracts repeat visitors, provides full transparency (a trust builder), builds goodwill, and entices subscribers to sign up for Confident Trader picks. win win

Add new site text.

Add informative articles to your website and create a site archive section. When a bot stops and compares your site’s current information with the cached view and sees all that new, fresh, juicy, “green” content, it ranks up because the search engine determines that it’s regularly serving good information.

If you can’t write, hire a copywriter to fill your website and blog with fresh content several times a week. You’ll quickly discover the tips of the cost-benefit equation in your favor.

Or write a few lines about what’s happening in your industry: an upcoming seminar, symposium, or trade show. In other words, keep your site visitors up to date with the latest news.

This establishes your credibility and the fact that you are connected to the latest news. And guess what…

…thanks to you, your readers too.