It’s So Easy to do a Website Update
So it’s been a while since you’ve worked on your website? Perhaps you have been focused on sales and there’s been no time. Maybe you took time off to add a product line, merge with a competitor, expand to another city. But now things have settled down and you are ready for the challenge: it’s time to update your website.
Time for a Fresh Approach
Take a look at your competition and see what they are doing these days. Look at several different competitors to see what’s new. You know that the Internet changes rapidly. If you haven’t updated your site, it will take a while for you to climb in Google rankings. Don’t just start over with a tired website. Bring something fresh to the scene.
Maybe you plan to take a new approach to your market. How should your website reflect that new approach? Open yourself up to new possibilities. Update your website with an emphasis on what’s changed. Make it edgy.
Time to Update Your Platform?
Three years ago you created your website with Dreamweaver or worse used Microsoft FrontPage. The web has swung to content management systems with WordPress leading the way. The most recent stats show that 26.4% of the Web is now powered by WordPress.
WordPress isn’t just for small business. Forbes, The New Yorker, Variety, Huffington Post and other large publications are using WordPress for their blogs. Thousands of themes are available with many at no cost. And if you want to customize those themes there are more than 45,000 plug-ins available.
Make sure that your theme will support Mobile devices. Google reports that more than 50% of their queries come from mobile devices. To reflect this trend they give preference to mobile sites when a query comes from a mobile device. You want to make sure that if a query comes from a mobile device your page can respond. It’s hard enough to navigate a website designed for mobile: impossible for one designed for a desktop.
Before you get started on the old website take some time and evaluate a move to WordPress with a modern, mobile responsive theme.
Time to Update Website Design?
Cornerstone content is the current technique for organizing your information. Imagine an organization chart with your business at the top. Just under this are the major business lines with details about the business lines at the next, lower level. You may have four or five business lines and maybe six or seven detail product/services categories from each business line. This “org chart” becomes the new design for your updated website.
The top-level page is the main location for the content about one part of your business. It is broad and inclusive about that one topic. It is the foundation for other pages that go into greater depth.
Cornerstone content pages give the reader a clear indication of what your website is about. She can look at the first paragraph of the page and know what your business does. Can your current pages become cornerstone content pages? If not, throw them out and break your business into its major business lines.
Blogs should also reflect back to and amplify the information on the cornerstone content pages.
Time to Update Website Aesthetics?
If you’ve chosen a new platform and a new organization why not go all the way and update your website’s look. Review current trends in web design and choose what makes sense for your business and your website.
How about your color palette? Does it need to be updated? Website looks seem to change as often as women’s fashion. If it’s been three years since your last update, there’s a good chance that you need a color update.
Time to Update the Old Blogs?
Look at your old blogs, there may be a treasure in there. Read them carefully to see if they are still current. If not update them or delete them, but be careful so that you don’t give away SEO authority. Read this post to learn how: https://yoast.com/website-maintenance-clean-up-old-posts/ Minor updating is possible without regard to affecting SEO authority.
Time to Promote Your Site?
Once you’ve finished with your update readers will flock to your pages. Actually, they probably won’t right away. To regain lost traffic and create more, you must promote your site. Social media is an effective way.
If you have a Facebook page, start there. Facebook is one of the most inexpensive ways to promote your updated site. But first, you may need to do a facelift to your Facebook page to carry through on the new look of your website. You can write some FB posts with a link back to your website and then boost your post. With Facebook, you can tailor the audience that will see your post and pay for only the demographics that mean the most to your business.
By posting on social media and linking to your site you can increase external traffic while at the same time getting exposure to your business.
Time to Get Busy?
Do these ideas encourage you to update your website? Feeling overwhelmed? We can help, give us a call.