You know that satisfying feeling of having a To-Do list, and coming to the end of the day to see them all ticked and completed? It feels great, makes you feel very satisfied and fills you with a sense of achievement.
Sadly, your website is not one of them!! Websites are more like the ironing, laundry, or the washing-up. You know it is finished for now, but sure enough tomorrow there will be more dishes in the sink, clothes in the laundry basket, and ironing in the ironing pile.
A Webmaster’s job is never done, so why is that?
Content
Content is king, and everyone needs to hear it and believe it. It is true, but content needs to be:
- Relevant
- Fresh
- Enticing
In some companies there is always new products, new services, events, etc. to write about, but as in most cases, the actual service or product does not change often. If you are a hotel, the rooms will be the same this year as they were last year (barring a refurbishment), or if you are lawyer or accountant, with the exception of new legislation, life is pretty much the same.
This means if you do not refresh your website’s content regularly, then your website content will become old, hence your Ranking will fall. In some cases content becomes irrelevant (legislation, hot topics, pricing, etc.).
Internet Dynamism
Think of the size of the internet, the number of website, and pages within those websites. At the time of writing this article there were 1.74 billion websites world wide.
Consider how many new pages are created every hour of every day. You can see how quickly your content can become “old news” or stale.
Competition
If you manage to get your website on the Page 1 of Google, you can bet that your competition, who you have just displaced, is not going to sit there and watch you eat their lunch! So they will respond, and some of that could include new content, which will then make your content older.
You can see how this can be a never-ending cycle.
Blogs & Articles
This is where blogging or article writing comes into play. They are ideal for companies with fairly stable products or service lines, as they can be about very specific subjects that people would be interested to know. Or it could be about questions you regularly get asked, about certain subjects, so you can expand and satisfy people’s curiosity.
The upside of this unpaid work is that it keeps your website content fresh, and on occasions it can bring you new business.
Business Dynamics
Businesses are generally not static. They have new products or services that come on stream, and old ones that are taken off sale. This means you do need to keep on top of your products, services, pricing, etc.
Good news is that this freshens your content, which in turn is good for your website performance in Organic Searches.
Maintenance
If you are using a PHP based website, including CMS products such as WordPress or Joomla, there are always updates for your platform. Sometimes it is improvements in performance or usability, and sometimes it is new functionality. Often it is security related, which means you must update your site to keep it secure.
Whilst this does not refresh website content, it does mean your website is secure and safe from hackers.
Summary
Websites are not fire-and-forget, as they need to be a dynamic competitive tool that reflect your business, products, and the market that you operate within. These are all dynamic environments, which means you need to keep your website fresh, relevant, and secure. Content is king, and the king needs a lot of attention.
We offer SEO with Fully Managed WordPress hosting service, which means we can help maintain your content fresh and identify subjects of interest for yoour potential clients. Contact us for more information.