For any small to medium businesses, updating your website content is arguably the most powerful action that you can take to increase business growth. Often neglected in favour of advertising as a website solution, there are many easy ways to update your website that will make a difference straight away.

When you edit your existing website, you will need to look at your website content and coding. Whether your CMS is WordPress or another type of system, all of these actions are easy website solutions for you or your website update service to carry out within your CMS.

Once you have been through the process of designing a website or having your website designed for you, it is perfectly reasonable to think that it is finished, and ticked off the list.

However, having a website is like having a pet – it needs regular attention. Little and often. According to the Nielsen Norman Group we only have a few seconds to impress our visitors and keep them on our sites, NNG says that ‘ Users often leave Web pages in 10–20 seconds, but pages with a clear value proposition can hold people’s attention for much longer’

Search engines are constantly updating their criteria for the search, users are increasingly savvy and competitors stay one step ahead – so we have to keep up. An updated website will increase rankings, gain more users, keep them for longer and stand out amongst its competitors.

So how can you edit an existing website so that your website content is updated regularly?

Follow these steps to ensure that your website remains up to date:

1) Website design that attracts and holds your users’ attention:

When your user lands on your website it needs to look fresh, exciting and appealing within seconds. Additionally, they also need to understand what you can do for them immediately, persicopix.co.uk reports that you only ‘have five seconds to convince them to stay’.

Search engines have evolved to pretty much work in the same way as your user, they need to understand your offer, find fresh, exciting, multi-media content and obtain answers to search questions from within your site. Without these simple website solutions, you won’t rank well.

How do you make your website look appealing in those precious few seconds?

Firstly, make sure that your web content and images are professional, attractive, up to date and modern. Copy should be engaging, easy to read, contain important keywords that explain your service and have plenty of enticing calls to action.

How do you create effective landing pages?

Your landing page is really important, it is the front door to your website. Make sure that when people arrive they are drawn in. Who you are, what your offer and where on your site to go to get it should be absolutely clear.

Get some friends, colleagues or a professional web solution service to do an honest test of your website as a brand new visitor. It is surprising how easy it is to create website content that does not provide any clarity to the user.

Next, when your user lands on your website they want to be able to trust you. Build trust by making your website an authority on your niche. Create blogs and content that informs, supports and entertains. Keep users coming back for more with news, updates, tips, interviews and offers that are well promoted through strong calls to action.

Build multiple ways for your users to interact with your website through reviews, videos, comments, social media buttons (pins, likes etc.), competitions, sign ups etc. Maintain a strong social media presence and use it in an integrated way with your website.

What is evergreen content?

Stick to evergreen content that won’t go off date. If you have dates on your copy and content, you will need to go back and update them, otherwise, it immediately makes your website appear neglected and out of date.

Is your website easy to navigate?

Again, both the search engines and your user need to be able to find the information that they want quickly and easy. There are three key things that you need to consider for effective site navigation.

Firstly, check that you have made good use of your category pages. Utilise your category pages for both navigation and SEO. Each aspect of your offer should be made clear and easy to find, with a category page of its own, supported by further sub-categories.

Additionally, throughout your content, blog and category titles, metadata, tags, headings and sub-headings, check that you have used keywords and key phrases effectively, this is an aspect of SEO that is often missed.

Next check your links. Check for broken and out-dated links. Further, ensure that you have used opportunities to create good internal links and established authoritative backlinks.

2) UX experience comes first

Both your user and the search engines want to land on your site and have a good experience straightaway. An effective, modern website has a responsive design.

What is responsive design?

Responsive design is mobile friendly and loads quickly. Consider how often anyone accesses the internet on a PC nowadays, according to statista.com “mobile internet traffic accounts for 51.2% of the share of total online traffic”.

Thus, a significant proportion of users will access your website on a mobile device so you need to ensure that your website design is optimised for mobile use.

Like all technology, web design changes rapidly. If your site has not been updated in the last 3-5 years, your site may not be up to date with current HTML and CSS standards. Images can cause lots of problems with site loading times, to ensure that they are loading effectively and optimised for SEO.

These are the most important web solutions that you need to keep track of, to ensure that your: website remains up to date, users stick around, the site ranks well and your business keeps growing. There is a lot to stay on top of, so whether you choose to do it yourself or use a website solution service to manage things for you, it is a vital part of your website management– an essential task that can build or stifle your business growth.

Do you agree or have we missed anything important? How do you stay on track with updates?  We would be love to know what you think, leave your stories, tips, and tricks.