One of the most important pieces of advice that I can give to you in regards to your current or future website is that you should view your website as a constant work in progress. If you want to grow your business or cause, then your website is going to need constant testing, tweaking and updating.

Now before I go any further, let me explain explain what I don’t mean.

You do not need a brand new website design or theme developed every 6 months. There may be times when you need to tweak your landing page items in order to reach more conversions, but the overall design of your website shouldn’t change too often. You paid good money for a professional website to be developed and odds are that you won’t need a redesign for at least two years, unless you have some major product and service offering changes.

So which part of my website needs constant work?

While much more can be said, I’m going briefly explain just 3 aspects of your website that need a fair amount of regular monitoring and maintenance.

Website Software Maintenance

If your website runs on a content management system, such as WordPress, your software will periodically have updates available just as your computer’s operating system often has updates that need to be ran. These updates almost always have security enhancements and will occasionally include brand new features to make managing your site even better. You do not want to go without updating your website’s software. Failure to take advantage of these important updates can result in decreased security of your website or even compatibility issues that can cause your site to not function correctly.

SEO and Landing Page Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most important aspects of internet marketing. Your potential customer’s ability to find you in search engines depends solely on how good your SEO is. What good is that awesome website you just had built if no one can find it? That’s why it’s important, at the very least, to track how much traffic your website is receiving and how that traffic is arriving. Tracking these stats will help to determine which keywords and keyword phrases need to be used more, or less, on your site.

While SEO helps to bring more people to your website, your landing page is what keeps them there. Even though you have a beautiful landing page, it still may not be effective at catching peoples’ attention and taking them deeper into the site. This doesn’t necessarily mean that your website designer did a bad job. All landing pages need to be tested, and at times even changed, in order to create more conversions.

Content, Content, Content

Your website’s content plays a huge role in your overall SEO as well as ensuring repeat visits to your site. I can’t overstate this enough. A beautiful looking website really isn’t worth much without quality content. You need to ensure that your website’s content is both search optimized and easy for your target audience to read and understand. You also need to make sure that your website always reflects your current services and products that are being offered. You know very well that when you launch a new service you must get the word out about it or else you shouldn’t expect to make many sales. Your website should be one of the first places that displays your new service or product information. You also need to make sure there isn’t old, irrelevant information on your site.

Adding new content to your site always helps your SEO because it gives the search engines more to look at and index. A great way to do this is by starting a blog. I know that four letter word may be scary to many small business owners, but it doesn’t have to be as bad as you think. As long as you start small and create a blog schedule that you’re comfortable you’ll do just fine.

Okay, I get it. But I don’t have time to constantly monitor and update my website.

I understand. Time is a limited commodity when you’re a small business owner that already wears ten different hats every single day. Because of that, we have created various website maintenance packages that are both affordable and highly effective at ensuring the success of your online presence, and in turn, your business. If you are interested in learning more about our website maintenance packages, please contact us here or give me a call at (270) 830-9590.