#BusinessEnhancementTips
02 – The Importance of keeping your website updated
If you run a business, you probably have a website — or you should anyway! Since 80% of customers will look up a business online before working with them, it’s vital to maintain a clear and updated website that showcases your brand.
You Want People to Know Your Brand
Your business makes its first impression the moment someone visits your website, and you want it to be good. People will know you by your brand, but if your brand is stale, your site will be forgettable.
Keeping your website updated means refreshing your brand and the visual impact of each page. Keep the layout clean and the text succinct. You want the right clients to find you, and they’ll do so by identifying with your brand. Make sure that the visuals and mission reflect what you currently stand for.
Give Visitors the Most Current Content
Having a website that lists out-dated content is a big red flag for potential customers. So, make sure that you set aside time each week (or month) to provide updates to the content.
Do you have a new product / service to feature? Are you running a special campaign? Show it off on your homepage with a banner and links to other existing products / services. And you can always add a blog to your website to hold yourself accountable for building fresh content. Just be sure to update your blog so it reflects the latest news.
Make Sure the SEO Is Strong
Another reason to update your site?
You can keep your search engine optimization, or SEO, in good shape. Having strong SEO means that you’ll attract the right customers — and more of them. Since search engines use algorithms to determine search results, you can’t rest on the SEO of two months ago — you have to stay current.
The more you refresh your content, the more Google will send its web crawler to crawl your website. The more often you update your site (or add new content such as a blog), the more Google will crawl your site and consider your website more relevant and push it higher in the search results.
You want to have a secure website, so update your website to ensure that security software is functioning properly. A hacked website leads to delays and disruption, and it looks unprofessional.
Make sure all extra features you’ve downloaded to your site come from reputable sources and change your passwords every few months to keep the hackers away.
Ensure That Your Site Loads Quickly
No one wants to sit around and wait for a website to load. Slow load time is one of the biggest deterrents from visiting a site. Plan to keep load time under 5 seconds.
If it’s taking longer than that for a page to materialize, determine what the culprits are. You may have images that are way too big, or it could be that your web theme is not updated. It’s suggested that one should look through images on the website and make sure they are as small as possible. When your pages are smaller, your page loads quicker (people are impatient).
The Bottom Line
Having a clean and current web presence for your business is mandatory in today’s world. If you keep your website updated, you’ll drive traffic to it and ultimately build a better business.
When you’re ready to have a winning website, contact us and we can help you with all aspects of the process!