Every month, around 5.22 billion people use the internet at least once. Over the course of a year, this is a lot of website traffic and potential revenue. But how do you manage to direct some of that to your website?
One way is by keeping your website fresh and updated regularly. Read on as we give our must-know reasons on why you should keep an updated website.
1. Faster Loading Times
When it comes to your website, its loading speed is one of the main factors you should concentrate on. Not only is it a metric against which your SEO ranking is measured, but people will go elsewhere if the content they want takes a long time to load.
Both of these are linked by a concept known as bounce rate. This measures how long people stay on your website when they visit.
If they leave quickly, it shows the search engine that the content is not relevant. As a result, your bounce rate goes up, and your SEO score goes down.
Most people won’t even wait to see the content anyway. If they click on your website and it loads slowly, they will go to another site. This also damages your brand awareness.
When addressing fast loading speeds, pay attention to the mobile version of your site. Changes you make might only impact the desktop version, but other viewing devices are just as important, if not more so.
2. Boost Your SEO
As well as bounce rate, there are other SEO factors that updating your website will address. Search engines constantly change and update their algorithms, and you need to adapt to stay relevant. If it looks like your website has not been updated or made any changes in a while, it will really damage your positions in the SERP rankings.
Once you start to lose SEO juice, you will lose organic traffic from search engines. You can learn more about website traffic here.
One way to do this is by updating any content on the site. Just by refreshing it and adding new information, your article will get flagged as new and more relevant. This makes it more likely to appear in front of a searcher’s query.
3. Better Brand Awareness
A business website is often the first thing new customers see. It is a reflection of your brand personality and your operating procedures. When you have a website that is outdated and not fit for purpose, it is inevitable that visitors will think the same about you.
Make sure you have a regular update that clears any outdated content and images. Ensure the website is clear, easy to use, and informative. This is bound to increase social media shares and word-of-mouth referrals.
4. Prevent Security Breaches
One of the major reasons to update your business website is to prevent security breaches. Hackers are always looking for ways to access websites. Updates are a way to seal any gaps that they may have found.
When you have a website, you are responsible for protecting not just your information but that of your customers. Leaks can lead to damage to your reputation and even legal action. If cyberattacks bring your website down, it can also result in a loss of revenue and leads while you try to get it back up and running.
Many security breaches occur through out-of-date website plugins. Keep these updated regularly. If the software developers don’t offer updates to it, then switch it to another one.
5. Increase User Experience
When website updating, you should always keep the user experience as a top priority. This is the way the website handles, and how the customers move through it. Should the website be hard to navigate or not provide the right information, leads will go elsewhere.
One way to ensure this is favorable is to follow a rule of three clicks. Any information on your website should be reachable within three clicks of a mouse button. Any more, and the information is too well hidden.
Recalculate your menus, where they go, and what they contain. Consider adding search options to the front page of the website.
6. Improve Your Sales Funnel
When you are considering how to update your website, keep a sales funnel in mind. As customers seldom buy a product on the first visit to a website, it is important you nurture them through a journey. This is the sales funnel, in which you gradually push customers towards an action, usually a purchase.
Sales funnels can be broken down into four parts. These are awareness, interest, decision, and action. Awareness will have been addressed by your marketing efforts that brought the customer to the site.
After this, use the website to guide the consumer. Make sure you use relevant images and persuasive text in building interest and the decision. Employ striking calls to action so they know what to do next and move on to the next stage with ease.
7. Something New for Returning Customers
Customer loyalty is as important as getting new leads in today’s marketplace. The customer journey does not end when they make an action. It is only the beginning.
When they come back to your site, give them something new and fresh to engage with. This can be special offers, sales, or even new, quality content. Before long, you will have regular traffic checking back to see what is going on with the company and how they can be a part of it.
Keeping an Updated Website
Now that you know the advantages of an updated website, set out a maintenance schedule. Break it down into different areas, such as backend and content. That way, you can work on a rotation, addressing each one at a particular time.
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