Updating your Website on a Regular Basis
Updating your website on a regular basis is important to you, your business, and important to your clients too. A boring website which is hard to navigate can put off clients even before they know what you are about. When seeking out new clients, keeping your website up to date is one of the most important things you can do.
Three things to focus on when updating your website:
- Updating Website Security
- Keeping Website Content Fresh
- Update Website Design
- Reviewing your SEO strategy
Updating Your Website’s Security
Security should be one of the top priorities for businesses both large and small. All too often we hear about large companies getting hacked, compromising information such as credit card numbers of their clients. This leads to a lack of trust and consequently can hurt the business.
Related article: Website Security Risks – Should You Be Worried?
One of the top reasons websites get hacked is because of the vulnerability in the framework and platform on which their website is built. New releases of software should come out every few months, and be easy to update to the latest version. Security features should be built into every new release. The developers should be spotting the vulnerabilities and improving their software before the issues affect your website. Websites are more likely to be hacked if they stay on older software versions.
Related article: Choose a Secure Website Platform – WordPress, Joomla! or Drupal?
Keep Your Website Content Fresh
Routinely updating your website’s content can help your business in a number of ways.
Better Content Gives You More Traffic
Keeping the content up to date on your site helps build trust between you and your customers. Most likely, customers rely on your site for useful information on whatever market you are in.
Updated information also helps build domain authority. Domain authority, briefly explained, is how much of an authority on a particular subject your website is. For example, one of the highest Domain authorities out there is Wikipedia.org, because it’s content is always well researched. Google holds this in high regard when trying to match search inquiries with useful and relevant information.
Have you ever visited a website that’s copyright is 2015 and the latest blog post is also years old? Does it make you wonder if they’re still in business? Customers can perceive that your business doesn’t keep up with the latest trends if your site contains outdated content.
Keyword Content Strategy
Another place to update your website is your keywords. It is only useful to have web pages on a specific topic if the keyword(s) are mentioned. For example, if your company provides White Goods Repair, then you should have a page on your website dedicated to White Goods Repair.
It’s important to keep the keywords on your website fresh as well as the content. Perhaps you’ve expanded into another area in the past few years, or are selling a new product or service. If you don’t update your keyword focus, you’ll continue to get traffic for your first product and service, but not for your new ones.
Updating Your Website’s Design
Many businesses focus only on content and internet marketing but fail to address the design and navigation of their website. Some of the things to avoid on your website include difficult navigation, colours that are either too boring or distasteful, and unnecessarily long customer contact forms. All of these things can lead to a website that steers customers away even if your content is perfect.
Mobile-Friendly Web Design
More than sixty percent of web traffic now comes from mobile devices like iPhones, iPads, Android Phones, and Tablets. This means that if your website is not mobile-friendly and easy to view on a smaller screen, you could be missing out on over half of your potential customers. It’s that simple!
Keep the Target Market in Mind
A website’s design should focus around the needs of the target customer. This means providing easily accessible, engaging content that the ideal customer within your target market will find useful. Your target market may change over time as you expand your business, hire new employees, or invest in new tools, so be sure you’re adapting the content of your website accordingly.
