I love the clean slate of a new year and the promise it brings. New Year’s resolutions don’t have to be tied to your waistline or vices, they can also be helpful for business goals. While I try not to go crazy on making New Year’s Resolutions (you’ll never see me give up donuts) I do think that setting achievable resolutions is a great way to stay motivated personally or professionally.
With that in mind, I’ve laid out some New Year’s resolutions for your website to help keep it engaging and performing in 2017!
Audit Your Website
Conducting an annual or semi-annual audit of your website is a valuable exercise. Think of it like an online spring cleaning, and comb through your site page-by-page looking for:
- Content on blogs and pages that is no longer relevant. Update or remove content as appropriate – and redirect any pages/posts you delete.
- Broken links or missing images that need to be fixed.
- Linking opportunities to drive visitors deeper into your site. New internal linking opportunities will arise each year as you add new content, so revisiting existing content will help you identify natural link opportunities.
An annual or semi-annual look at your website will also give you a chance to see your site with fresh eyes. This will help you spot errors you may have missed and give you a new perspective on improvements for user experience. Check out these resources to help making your website audit a breeze.
Commit to Quality Content
Committing to producing regular, quality content is essential to make sure your website is found and relevant to visitors.
The emphasis here is on QUALITY content, as search engines know what’s valuable and what isn’t. Google shares its quality guidelines, which include writing for people rather than for search engines, creating unique, credible, helpful content and avoiding deceptive behavior.
Not sure where to start to create valuable content?
- Speak with the person(s) in your company who field client questions. Start by answering the most common queries they receive in your blogs or on an FAQ page.
- Identify topics your website already covers and could dig into more deeply. E.g. if you have a page outlining applications for your widgets, sharing examples of each application could be helpful to visitors.
- Tell the stories of your staff or clients to round out your messaging, or bring some human interest to dry topics.
Refresh Regularly
It’s easy to commit to reviewing your site and creating great content – it’s harder to implement.
Create an achievable schedule to handle these tasks so your resolution doesn’t wane by spring. We typically recommend our clients aim for one new piece of content each week, but what’s most important is that you commit to a schedule you can actually keep.
If you find yourself struggling to keep these resolutions, give us a shout and we can help with your website refreshing needs!