How often do you adjust your website content? Most website owners don’t grasp how crucial this is to the long-term success of their sites. Refreshing your content periodically keeps your site up-to-date, and also helps maintain your search engine rankings, which is a critical element in helping potential clients find your website.
The most important reason to change content is to maintain relevancy. An outdated website affects everything from your number of visitors, the amount of time they stay on your website (bounce rate), your site’s ranking in the search engines, and ultimately your bottom line.
A common problem caused by an outdated site is losing traction in search rank. A well-designed website that has enjoyed good placement in Google can suddenly drop off the first few pages, just from being neglected. The function of a search engine is to point users to high-quality relevant sites for their search inquiries. Websites that are constantly updating and offering up new content are, by nature, considered more important than a site that hasn’t been updated in some time.
So . . . How do you avoid this trap? It’s simple, update your site regularly. You don’t need to make radical changes; a few simple changes every few weeks or even months will be enough. Here are some tricks you should know:
• Blog. This is a great way to keep your content dynamic and lure visitors to your website. Nobody expects a novel from you each day. A blog can easily be a few short paragraphs once or twice a week. If you can keep posting entries regularly, you can build a habit for visitors to keep coming back to the site to read your new posts, all while reminding the search engines that you have new content.
• A news or newsletter page is a great way to keep your site fresh without needing to spend much time coming up with new content. A newsletter is a great way to keep your clients informed on changes that may affect them, but keep it personal. Include information about your firm and community. If you have a newsletter provided by someone else that updates on your site automatically, that’s a lot of new content every month that you don’t have to supply at all.
Also, try adding new verbiage to pages that have existed on your website since day one. Believe it or not, the search engines take notice and these small updates can go a long way.
Generating new content and maintaining a site relevant to your clientele are simple, essential ways to garner more positive attention from the search engines and your clients. Even the best website becomes irrelevant in a short period of time, so keep it fresh!
