The practice of SEO is a never-ending process of testing, measuring, and reading what other people are saying.

But what about using common sense?

I like to think that Google wants to rank highly of those websites that publish fresh content, consistently, on a daily or weekly basis. But it's not always true. There are websites that get the #1 listing for short-tail keywords that seemingly are never updated.

But let's assume for this discussion that content freshness is a key factor towards moving up in the rankings. What are the signs of a website that is fresh, active, and "alive"?

• Adding new content


• Adding new navigation pages, site map


• Redesigning the look of the site


• Fixing broken links


• Rewriting existing content (eg. fixing spelling/grammar errors)


• Moving the site to a new server


• Buying keywords on AdWords



• People posting comments to your blog


• Other websites adding links to your site


• Google users clicking on your AdWords

The first seven bullet points are things that you as a website owner can control, while the last three points are those that you don't control.

I'm not saying that Google considers all of these factors, I'm just saying that it seems sensible these are characteristics of a website that's fresh and active.

For example, if your website has a lot of broken links, it suggests that you're not interested in keeping it current. To me, that says your website is not as authoritative as it could be. If a competing website in your genre has all links working, doesn't that website deserve extra page rank value over yours?

I started this article by saying that SEO is a practice of testing and measuring. We can never know the specifics of Google's search algorithm, but we can second-guess it, and then put those ideas to test. And that starts with using common sense.  ✓