In our October meeting, Dom Wint from Clean Page Design gave us a talk on how and why you should keep your website content up to date.
While many people have a website, far too many are left to stagnate when it comes to adding new information or updating what’s already there. This can cause many issues, both with how your website is viewed by search engines and also how human beings perceive your business based on what they find.
Business owners often say they want the ability to make changes to their new website, but rarely do. In Dom’s experience, there are many reasons for this:
- They lack the knowledge to make updates
- They lack the time to make updates
- They don’t see the need to do it
- They don’t feel like they have anything “newsworthy”
Adding news to your website doesn’t mean you have to embrace your inner Laura Kuenssberg, beating the Fleet Street hacks to the latest political scandal. It simply means keeping the public informed as to what’s been happening in your business.
This could be talking about: a new piece of equipment; a new contract you’ve won, started or finished; a training course that you or your staff have been on, delivered or hosted; a networking event that you attended; a significant milestone in your business, such as an anniversary of your company launch; awards you’ve been nominated for, or won; staff profiles, new members of staff or apprentices you’ve taken on board; how-to articles, where you explain a particular aspect of your industry in simple terms; a simple diary of day-to-day life in your company…
The list is not endless, but it is extensive.
The key to this, as with other aspects of your marketing, is in the planning. So sit down with your diary. Look at what you’ve done and where you’ve been over the last 6-12 months – and where you’ll be in the next 6-12 months – and plan out what you can write about now and in the future. Once a month is a sensible minimum amount to update your site. Don’t worry too much about how much you wriet (although more is usually better – around 300 words to start).
Why are you doing this?
By regularly updating your content you are doing two important things: from a human being’s point of view you are showing that your company is a thriving, going concern, and you are providing interesting and knowledgable information for people to read. From a search engine point of view, you are adding depth to your site, incresing the number of pages and keywords which, ultimately, add to your website’s “authority”.
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