Have you ever bought a donut—and looked forward to eating it all day—only to bite into it and find out it’s stale?
Nobody likes stale things. Stale bread. Stale donuts. Stale websites—yuck! Google dislikes stale websites. A stale website is a site that’s been sitting idle for a period of time. Nobody really knows exactly what period of time creates a ‘stale website,’ but a general rule of thumb is to update your site weekly or biweekly.
These updates not only tell your customers you care, they also send important signals to Google. One of Google’s many ranking factors, or the numbers they crunch to decide where your website appears in the search engine results, is the frequency of updates. The more updates you make, the better.
Here’s how to keep your site fresh to please search engines and to engage your customers.
Site Updates: What and When to Update
There are certain rules of thumb about what to update and when to update it.
- Home Page: You should refresh your home page every two to three years, or more frequently if your services or offerings have changed significantly. It may be helpful to have a heat map analysis done to measure the places on your home page with the greatest engagement. This can help you tweak them to generate more leads or sales.
- About Page: Update it as soon as a change happens, such as staff joining or leaving the company. Be sure to add any awards or recognition your company has received, too.
- Blogs: Blogs should be updated weekly with fresh content. You can also pop back into older blog posts and update them with fresh insights. Google counts that as an udpate, too.
- Product or Service Pages: Tweak these quarterly to ensure everything is up to date.
- Plugins: Plugins running in the background of WordPress sites should be checked and updated weekly to ensure security features are enabled and up to date.
- Copyright: Yup, don’t forget to update the little @ in the footer of your site. Nothing says “stale” like a copyright date from several years ago…
Website Design
What about your overall website design? If the appearance of the design doesn’t look outdated, you can use the same design for several years. However, tastes—and best practices—do change. You may wish to discuss the site design with us to see if we can make incremental changes or tweaks, or if we recommend a complete refresh.
Website Structure and Host
Changing your website structure such as moving from Wix to WordPress or changing hosts is a big move. It should not be undertaken lightly or frequently. Most business owners would benefit by working with professional web designers and SEO experts to ensure that every aspect of the site is addressed during the move, such as properly coding the redirect links and installing the right framework to meet your needs.
Considerations such as connecting point of sale systems, ensuring contact forms and newsletter sign up boxes are working, and selecting a secure and stable framework are vital for website health.
Time for a Fresh Look?
If it’s time for a change, or you know you want to update your website but you just can’t seem to get to it, let us know. We can help. Whether it’s refreshing the text on the home page, adding a blog entry, or ensuring site maintenance is done properly, call Dashboard Interactive Marketing at 763-242-2454.