Best time to update a website

time to update a website

The first question to answer when considering the best time to update a website – is what does this question actually mean?

Updating the content?

Or updating its design and technical structure?

Updating website content

In an ideal world, a website should be updated at least weekly – by this we mean that new content should be added and pages tweaked. This can be particularly beneficial when your analytics show some pages have low volumes of traffic. The more frequently your website is updated, the more likely it is that Google will crawl your site more frequently. In doing so, Google may then update your website trust rating, which in turn can lead to an improvement performance in organic search results for the key words you wish to appear for on the first page of search results.

Content can be new images (make sure they are appropriately ALT tagged), news articles, case studies, testimonials and new pages about products and services or content about the key words and phrases for which you wish to be found. Writing website content may seem easy, but it does require skill and expertise to ensure it is written in a way that gives your content the best chances of ranking highly in organic search – i.e. when people type in the words they are searching for.

Other areas to consider are ensuring there are suitable calls to action and enquiry form options so that browsers are prompted and encouraged to take the actions you want them to take when on that page.

Updating design and rebuild

This would include appearance, navigational structure and other features that are behind the scenes that may now mean your website is hard for search engines to crawl and index your content. Google is making changes to its algorithm all the time so its important to keep pace. This also includes other factors that affect your ranking such as whether your website is responsive – i.e – does it adapt appearance when viewed on mobile devices.

Searchengineland provides a very good ‘period table of SEO success factors.” If your website can’t tick the boxes on this chart, there is a very good business case to upgrade the design and build of your website, because no matter how much content you add, at some point your success will be hampered by technical factors related to the coding within your content management system (CMS) that can only be rectified by a website developer. Sometimes these can be done, but sometimes it is more cost effective to carry out a complete overhaul.

When is it time to update a website?

In summary, it is time to update a website if it has become a time consuming process to add content because your CMS is too clunky, you can’t easily add backend content that is key to performing well in key words searches, such as adding key worded meta titles and meta descriptions etc, or content has become cluttered and visitors can no longer easily read content or intuitively click – it’s time to upgrade – and its definitely time to upgrade if your website is not responsive.

Also, if your website does not have  “https” in its url its very wise to ask your developer for advice as your website may no longer be secure. HTTPS is a modification of the HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) standard used to allow the exchange of content on the Internet. The “S” stands for secure, which means the HTTP connection is encrypted — preventing exchanged information from being read in plain text, or “as you see it.”

If you would like help or advice managing your next website project please get in touch.

 


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