Now that you have a website, you have a powerful marketing tool for your business. But, remember that your website is only useful if the content is current. The process of keeping the content on your site current is called website maintenance, and it's important to keep both visitors and search engines supplied with new information. Just like regular maintenance on your car, you have to make regular changes to your website to make sure that you get the best performance possible from it.
If you have us update the content on your website on a regular basis, potential clients will be drawn back to your site to find out "what's new". Search engines pay visits to websites in their queue regularly, but the only way to stay in the queue is to ensure your site is updated regularly. If the search engines visit your site several times in a row and don't find anything new, they may decide not to come back - which can be devastating to your search engine rankings.
Don’t waste money tweaking you site if you don’t have updates of real value to add. We suggest you have us update your site if you’ve:
- Grown your skills. Have you got a new accreditation or award? Have you improved your skills? Any change in your skill set is a great reason to update your website so that your potential clients are made aware of your new capabilities.
- Expanded your products or services. Have you got something new to offer? Add it to your website and start making new sales.
- Completed a successful project. If you've just finished a project, include it on your website. Create an online gallery and add to it regularly.
- Received more testimonials, or added to your client list. Including more feedback from satisfied clients/customers helps to build your credibility. Try to get a testimonial from each of your successful client projects. Updating your testimonials regularly will also show potential clients that you have an increasing number of happy clients thereby building trust.
- Written an article. Writing articles is a great way to keep your website up-to-date and to put more content on your site. Search engines love content-rich sites, and visitors will love to see the new information. So, if you write articles to educate your clients and promote your business, be sure to place them on your website as well. They're likely to be full of keywords related to your area of specialty, which will improve your ranking in the search engines.
- Issued Press releases? You should post all press releases and other information you publish about your company, products or service to your website. You never know who may be visiting, and you may get valuable links from other sites to your press releases. Links to your site are one of the best ways to improve search engine rankings.
- Made changes in your business. Have you hired someone new? Has your business structure changed and you're now required to notify the public of that? If so, you should probably review your website and evaluate how you can add that information.
... and don't forget about annual check-ups. You should do a basic check on your site at least once a year to make sure that the content is current. Some things to check include:
* Copyright statements should be updated annually.
* Time references should be changed. If your "About" page says how many years you've been in business, make sure it is correct!
* Pricing and offerings - do you have new products or services? Have your prices changed over the past year?
Draw attention to any major updates on your index page (home page) as well so that visitors will learn of those updates as soon as they enter your site. Search engines will also discover the new update as soon as they enter your site if you include some information, with a link to the full story, on the index page. They can then follow your link to index the new information.
These are just a few of the many reasons to make changes to your site. If you make keeping your website current a priority, it will pay off with better search engine rankings and increased sales and leads through your website.
By including more and more current information into your website, you will also begin to build trust with your potential clients as they will have a picture of what's currently happening in your business which may be of benefit to them. Your website can go a long way towards making sure that your online visitors (prospects) know, like and trust you - which should definitely lead to more sales from your website.
A
great way to improve your link popularity which is directly
related to your search engine ranking, is to take advantage
of our FREE classified advertisement offer. We have "classifieds"
on our four town websites (www.matamata-info.co.nz/classifieds.html - www.morrinsville-info.co.nz/classifieds.html - www.tearoha-info.co.nz/classifieds.html - www.thames-info.co.nz/classifieds.html)
and they receive an enormous amount of visitors - if you're
not there you're missing out!! All you have to do is forward
us 25 words about your business - a breeze surely!! Your
classified advertisement will be linked to your website
and also have an email link on it if requested - www.matamata-info.co.nz/classifieds.html was the 7th most visited directory on the site during October!!
