After having your website designed, online and promoted, as well as successfully establishing marketing tools for your business, maintaining the site with up-to-date information is the thing to do next.
A website is only as use as the content is current. Maintaining your website with new and updated information is to keep both visitors and search engines supplied with new things to consider.
If you update the content on your website on a regular basis, potential clients will be drawn back to your site seeking for "what's new".
Search engines that pay visits to websites in their queue regularly, always like new things to update into their databases. If search engines visit your site several times in a row, and don't find anything new, your site may come lower in their priority, and this can give a bad impact on how your site perform on them.
When updating a site with new content is a necessity, a question arise: when is the appropriate time to update the site? You shouldn't waste time and money updating your site if you don't have real value updates to add. But when you do, you should update it as soon as possible. You should update your site if you have:
Articles in mind. Writing articles, or a business blog, 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.
Expanded products and/or services. If you have something new to offer, an addition can be made to your web page to start making sales in that area.
Completed a successful project. After finishing a new project, you can include it on your website. Create an online portfolio, add a case study - build a section on your website to use as a place to show your visitors about your success.
Improved skills. After having a new accreditation or licensing, or any other improvement in your skill, your website has a good reason to be updated to make new potential clients see you as an opportunity.
New feedback. When you've got a new client list and/or testimonials, a new update can build you credibility to the next level.
Press releases. You should post all press releases and other information you publish about your company to your website. You never know who may be visiting, and you may get written up for your accomplishments.
Changes in business. Changing your business structure is worth noting on your website. Any changes made on business' movement is necessary for your customers as well as the potential ones, to know. And the fastest way is by updating your website.
Yearly 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 on include: copyright statements, links validation, time reference, pricing and offerings.
Your homepage is your presentation. You can also improve your new updated information by highlight them on your homepage so that visitors and customers will learn of those updates as soon as they enter your site. The search engines will also discover the new update as soon as they enter your homepage if you leave a bit of information with a link to the full story, on the home page. That will act as a breadcrumb for the engine to follow - the search engines will follow the link to learn more about it.
Any of these reasons, and dozens of others, are great 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 bringing more up-to-date information to your website, you will also begin to build trust with your potential clients, since they will have a glance of what's currently happening in your business and what is available to them at any given moment.
Your audience oriented website can go a long way towards making sure that your online prospects know, like, and trust you - which can lead to more sales from your website.