How often should I be making website updates?
Your website does a lot of heavy lifting. It serves as a digital marketing tool, appearing in relevant searches and presenting you as a solution to potential customers' problems. It's also a resource for existing customers, who often have questions like "When do they open?" or "Do they carry this product?"
Website updates help you provide the correct answer at the right time. It's the digital equivalent of updating your pricing list or sprucing up your storefront: Things must be accurate and polished to make the right impression.
In this article, we'll discuss how often you should update your website and which regular updates are most important.
Why are regular website updates essential?
Website updates matter to customers and search engines. Updates offer customers a positive user experience, whether your visitor is a loyal customer or just shopping around.
Regularly updating content can also improve your site's search engine optimization (SEO), especially for time-sensitive queries.
For example, say it's autumn, and your target audience includes tire shoppers. Someone near your shop searches for "winterizing my car" or "snow tires near me." You're likelier to be a top search engine result if you recently added content about your snow tires or current winterization promotion.
Finally, regular website updates let you check your website's technical aspects. A smoothly running website performs better in search results, so use your updates to look for broken links and check page loading times. These quick fixes are often quick routes to better rankings.
How often should you update your website?
Before creating a site update schedule, you need to consider your community's needs. Most importantly, how often do you change your products and services?
Seasonality and pricing
If you run a seasonal business with different products or services every few months, you'll want to update quarterly or more often. Plan to run an update each time you change to a different product or service set.
Also, think about your pricing patterns. Some businesses need weekly or even semi-daily updates to keep up with frequent promotions and price changes. These updates don't have to be time-intensive, but pricing and item availability must be accurate.
SEO Content
If your product and service offerings are relatively stable, consider using marketing content to keep your website fresh. Timely blog posts can help you rank for relevant keywords, including terms your permanent website content doesn't cover. Plus, with the right call to action, each post can link to other valuable content within your site.
Blogs need consistent updates, but there's no hard and fast rule for frequency. Plan an update schedule that makes sense for your business, considering the topics you plan to address and how often you'll generate new content.
How to know when it's time to update
When you're busy running a business, tasks like updating your website can fall by the wayside. Routine tweaks may be able to wait, but here are three situations when you want to update as soon as possible.
Listed products or services don't match what you offer
Have you ever visited a local business's website and seen that they have a particular product in stock? You then travel to the store, only to find that the product is no longer available. They may have changed the price or stopped carrying that item.
Your job as a business owner is to prevent these experiences. Customers who visit your website should be able to find all the information they need and trust what they find.
Don't forget to update your website every time your product or service inventory changes. Information can hide on various web pages, so check your entire site.
You've updated your branding
Maybe you've just undergone a company rebrand and want to showcase that amazing new logo. Maybe you've updated your look by incorporating new digital design trends. Or you've realized that your services and product offerings have expanded, and your website needs to reflect those changes.
Whatever your reasons, website design updates should be part of rebranding. Your website is the face of your business, and people expect it to match your brand identity.
Organic traffic has decreased
One of your website's key jobs is delivering traffic to your business. If your visitor stream has stagnated or declined, it might be time for a site refresh.
Not sure how much web traffic you get? Attach Google Analytics to your website and get detailed reports about your visitors, including how many you get and where they come from. You can also look at bounce rates or how many people leave your website almost immediately.
By integrating this information into your website design, you can increase engagement and improve conversion rates—up to 18 times over, according to Google.
Keep your website current with Optimize
Your website can be an excellent source of new business. But first, it needs to engage. You need to provide visitors with quality content and follow SEO best practices.
Optimize can help. We provide web design and development services that integrate with your complete digital marketing strategy, from social media to paid ads.
To learn more about how Optimize can help you manage your business's website, schedule your free consultation today.