Web Update Calendar for Travel & Tourism Marketing

There’s a new issue of the Wanderlust Report out this week. “Destination Web Content: Why Fresh is Best” discusses the importance of updating travel and tourism website content to improve search ranking and site traffic.

The newsletter suggests seven sources of fresh web content you can continuously add to your site, and offers recommendations for the frequency of updates for each type (This doesn’t address your main content areas). Here’s the short version, for quick reference:

How often should you update web content?

• News Releases: If you have the stories, don’t hold back, but generally one to four releases a month is appropriate without being too pushy.

• Newsletter: One newsletter per month is a normal expectation; quarterly or even six to eight times a year is acceptable.

• Blogs: Depending on your content and capacity resources, blog entries can be posted daily, or once or twice weekly. If you’re not posting more than a couple entries a month, your blog is likely to be forgotten.

• Podcasts: The frequency of podcasts can vary greatly by content, but try to get a few into distribution early, and follow up periodically as appropriate.

• Embedded Videos: Again, depending on your content, you could be posting videos daily or annually. No hard and fast rules here, but more is generally better.

• Profiles and Interviews: Maybe weekly for a high web-traffic period (like ski season), biweekly or monthly as a more steady year-round strategy.

• Online Communities: The frequency of user-generated posts is up to your community, but don’t hesitate to comment or even start conversations – and be sure to respond promptly to any inquiries or complaints.

How fresh is your website content? If you don’t know the answer, travel consumers and search engines are probably already going somewhere else for the latest information.