Launching a website is a satisfying feeling. Like the maiden voyage of a seaworthy vessel, it merits celebration and a round of applause. However, the work doesn’t end there. You have to keep your website fresh and engaging if you want people to return. This raises an important question: how often should businesses update their website content?
How Often Should Businesses Update Their Website Content? Four Scenarios to Consider
1. Establish a Regular Update Schedule
Even though your website absolutely needs a refresh from time to time, there’s no magic interval that works best for every business. Generally, however, we’d recommend making it your goal to update your content annually. That doesn’t mean you have to completely rewrite every single page on your website. Some pages may only need a quick refresh or minor edits.
For example, you might just want to update statistics or cultural references. These little details age quickly in the internet era. Your fun fact about a celebrity from 2018 may seem woefully outdated now. Content’s like a diaper: if you don’t change it regularly, it’s going to stink.
Ideally, give your content a quick read once a year and mark any pages that you think need an update. Chip away at this work and you should be able to keep your website fresh and dynamic.
2. More Frequent Updates on Most Viewed Pages
Besides reviewing everything annually, you should select certain pages to receive more frequent updates. Choose your most popular pages and review them quarterly. This can seem counterintuitive. After all, if a particular piece is performing quite well, why change it?
In most cases, your top pages are landing pages or ones that get bookmarked and tend to get repeat views. Therefore, if you want people to keep coming back even more frequently than they already are, give them regular updates! They’ll see that the site is always changing and they’ll be more likely to take a peek to see if there’s anything new.
This is especially true for FAQs, where updates reflect more commitment to customer service. Your homepage likewise deserves regular refreshes. If your website content doesn’t ever evolve, it can give the impression that your business is stagnant or simply bad at technology. Regular updates to your whole body of content and frequent updates of popular pages will cover most of your content updates. What about the rest?
3. Update When a Page Underperforms
Now let’s consider some more specific situations. You might have a few laggards on your content list. What can you do about a piece that completely flopped and has underperformed consistently?
The first thing to remember is that you can’t overreact. Sometimes content takes a while to float to the top. But if you’ve given it a few months and those line graphs are still flat, it might be time to update that specific piece of content. You can replace it entirely with a new post, or you can rewrite the existing one.
However, you can’t fix the problem until you determine what went wrong. Odds are it was a poor headline or weak SEO that resulted in the poor performance. You can write a new piece with better SEO that links back to the problem post, which will help drive new traffic and internal traffic at the same time.
4. Update to Reflect New Customer Concerns
Sometimes life throws curveballs at your content. A major world event or a shift in consumer attitudes can drastically alter your content roadmap and force you to rewrite your work. For example, as more people prioritize climate action, you may want to add some comments about how your company is reducing its carbon footprint.
Similarly, a joke might have been funny a few years ago, but it could be seen as offensive today. Certain words or phrases may no longer be socially acceptable. If you fail to root these out, your old posts could come back to haunt you.
Get the Content Your Website Needs
If your website is due for a refresh, you don’t have to go it alone. Here at SteadyContent, we have a team of writers that can help you modernize your content in a matter of minutes. Contact SteadyContent today to schedule a meeting.
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