Three reasons why you need to maintain your website
If you want your website to be relevant to your users and easily found by search engines, you need to maintain it with reliable website support and fresh engaging content.
There was once a time when you could create a truly beautiful website, fill it once with great content and then set and forget. Yes, it was a long time ago in ‘digital years’ and now it’s safe to say those days are over. If you want your website to be relevant to your users and easily found by search engines, you need to maintain it with reliable website support and fresh engaging content.
1. Search engines
Getting your website on that first page of search engine rankings is an online ambition of most companies and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a booming business due to the fact that achieving the best Google rankings requires a lot of work.
But before we even get into the ways to climb up those rankings, your website needs to be found by search engines. If your website doesn’t contain factors such as on-page optimisation, meta-descriptions and keywords, Google can’t find it easily and if Google can’t find it – how will your customers?
2. Content is king
Online audiences devour content – quickly. And if your online audience isn’t finding your website relevant or interesting, they’re just one click away from your competitors. Content is key to search engine rankings and Google is getting very sophisticated in the way online content is assessed and creates new algorithms, such as Panda 4.0 constantly to deliver the user experience online audiences want.
Your content needs to be much more than your latest sales brochures posted online. It needs to be:
- Informative
- Educational
- Well targeted
- Well written,
- Sharable via social media
- New
And we haven’t even started on website design yet. The quality assessment of your website’s content includes everything on your site, the images, videos and graphics – as well as the words.
3. The backend counts
Just because your customers and audience can’t see what’s under the bonnet of your website, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a good handle on how the basics, such as your website hosting sever and Content Management System (CMS), work.
Servers need regular tweaks and routine maintenance to make sure the websites they’re hosting are operating at optimum speed and availability. A website that is too slow or out-of-action due to server ‘issues’ is not popular with Google’s page ranking algorithm.
The popularity of open-source CMS such as WordPress and Drupal, has lowered the barrier to entry for anyone and everyone to have a website and while the benefits of open source software are great, these platforms and their plugins and extensions are constantly updated for relevance, security and new features. For your website to work at its best, you either need to keep on top of these updates yourself, or pay someone to manage these tasks for you.
iFactory is a leader in web designer in Brisbane. For over 10 years, we have delivered web design to Brisbane companies as well as organisations around the country, who rely on us to provide the full range of website design, website support and website maintenance services. If you’ve got a question about maintaining your website, contact us now.
