Adding quality content is one of the best ways to keep your website fresh for Google and other search engines. Creating content allows you to include keywords that are relevant to your practice. The more content you have, the more potential your website has to reach a wider audience.

We’re going to review two types of content – timely content and evergreen content – and how they benefit your website. Remember to provide links to your sources so your readers will be able to do their own research.

Timely Content

Posting timely content is a great way to join a discussion in your industry. Does your practice subscribe to any medical journals? Recently published medical articles may give you ideas for your practice’s blog, but keep your audience in mind when writing these posts. Are you writing for patients and potential patients, or are you writing for peers well versed in medical terminology?

Newsworthy content also has potential to gain lots of views at once, especially if you post timely content before other websites have a chance to write up the same topic. For instance, if your practice wrote a piece on NHS Fife banning smokers from infertility treatment, the post may gain lots of traffic from the timeliness and the controversy of the event.

Recent content is sometimes more trustworthy than dated content. Let’s say you have two articles you can read on Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection, both from trusted sources. One is dated June 1999 and the other is dated June 2012. Which one will you read?

Timely content satisfies readers with the now. What’s happening now, what’s new to the field, and what news affects your practice and your patients?

Evergreen Content

Evergreen content stays relevant for months and even years. Think of topics that aren’t changing too often. Your patients may benefit from a blog post on finding an egg donor or an overview of the female reproductive system even though these aren’t time-sensitive topics.

Make a list of topics that your patients ask about regularly. Could you make informative posts out of any of these topics that could help your patients and potential patients? Keep adding to your list. When you’re ready to write a new blog post, you’ll be glad to have some inspiration.

Remember, just because your topic is evergreen doesn’t mean you can write it, post it and never think of it again. SEOmoz, a popular SEO resource, has a great post on the power of evergreen content.

“Now think of a pine tree with no sun or water – the needles turn brown, become brittle, and eventually fall off and the tree dies,” Nick Eubanks writes. “Sustainable content is no different; it requires maintenance to stay alive, to remain useful.”

Go back through your old posts every once in while to make sure the information is still true, correct and useful. Make any changes that will help keep your post sustainable. Updated posts will still trigger search engines to re-crawl your website for indexing, which helps your website gain traffic from search results.

Once you’ve created a timely or evergreen post, share it on your social media outlets and encourage discussions.