Once you get your shiny new website up and running, you may be thinking that the job is done, and all you have to do is sit back and wait for the business to roll in. But sadly it’s not as simple as that. Even if your web designer has submitted the site to the search engines and done all the other things they normally do to give it a kick start, your work is not over.
It’ll look great for a month or two, but a website starts to look old pretty quickly. A site that isn’t perceived as ‘current’, and doesn’t look like the owners have given it any attention for a while, is a site that visitors will lose interest in and feel less inclined to trust.
You may think there isn’t much to say about your business beyond the ‘online brochure’ concept that you had in mind when you first had the site built. But this presents another problem, in addition to the visitor perception issue mentioned above. It’s well known that search engines favour a site with a high turnover of fresh content.
Many website owners start out with the best of intentions, even going as far as to include a ‘news’ page to make it look dynamic. But a news page where the last entry was eight months ago has precisely the opposite effect.
But if your business isn’t the kind of place that has fresh news every day, don’t despair. Even general news connected with the industry you work in will do. Just a few lines along with a link to the article, wherever this may be, will be fine for your purposes.
If you’re the kind of person who likes to offer opinion and analysis on issues concerning your industry, one of the easiest ways to keep your content updated is to get a blog, like the one you’re reading now. Your web designer can attach it seamlessly to your main site, and regular posts with tips, advice or news relating to your industry will go a long way towards showing Google that yours is a site worth sending visitors to. Your Google ranking will reflect this.
Every new product launch, every major job completed, contract won or trade show exhibited at should be shouted about on your website. Got a new key employee? Entering a new market? Joined a new trade body? Hosting a customer event? Then write about it. Put it on your news page, with a taster on your home page.
Read the wordings for the products and services on your website regularly. You will often think of a better way of saying something, or find a new angle to make your offering more attractive to potential customers.
If your website includes product photos, or pictures of the work you do, update them regularly. This will make your site look more dynamic to regular visitors and Google will notice too.
You may be suprised to learn that the cost of all these updates can be minimal. Many updates take just a few minutes and if you have a good honest web designer, they won’t round my charges up to the nearest hour for each update. That means you can potentially have lots of updates to your web site in a given month and only pay a very small charge.
So keeping your website up to date is easy, cheap and pays dividends in the long run, because Google and your visitors will favour you for it. Talk to me if you’d like further information
Tags: Blog, Google, SEO, Website Maintenance
