Keeping Your Website Current Matters
How often should you update your website? The answer depends on your business, your website and how frequently things change. Your website is often one of the first places potential customers go to learn about your business, so keeping it current is important for accuracy, performance, security, SEO and the overall visitor experience.
How often your website should be updated depends on the type of website you have and how frequently your business changes.
Content Updates: Whenever Something Changes
Your website should always reflect your current business. Update your content whenever there is a meaningful change to your services, pricing, hours, staff, contact information, photos or other important information.
Even if nothing major changes, it’s a good idea to review your primary pages several times throughout the year to make sure everything is still accurate and relevant.
WordPress, Plugin and Theme Updates: Regularly
WordPress websites rely on the WordPress core software along with themes and plugins that are updated by their developers.
These updates may include security patches, bug fixes, compatibility improvements and new features. They should be reviewed and installed regularly rather than allowing months of updates to accumulate.
Before significant updates are performed, having a current website backup is also important in case an update causes an unexpected compatibility issue.
Security and Backups: Ongoing
Website maintenance isn’t only about changing what visitors see.
Regular backups, security monitoring, software updates and performance checks help protect the website behind the scenes. A website that appears perfectly fine on the surface can still have outdated software or other issues that need attention.
This is one reason DARR Designs offers ongoing Website Care and Website Management options for businesses that don’t want to handle these responsibilities themselves.
SEO: Think Long Term
Search engine optimization isn’t something that should be completed once and forgotten.
Your website’s content, competitors and search results can change over time. Adding useful content, improving existing pages and reviewing how your website appears in search engines can help strengthen your online visibility.
Publishing helpful articles that answer questions your customers are actually searching for can also create additional opportunities for your website to appear in search results.
How Often Should You Review Your Entire Website?
As a general guideline, businesses should perform a broader website review at least once or twice each year.
During that review, look at your:
- Services and pricing
- Contact information
- Photos and graphics
- Calls to action
- Forms and links
- Mobile experience
- Website speed
- Search visibility
- Security and backups
Sometimes a few updates are all that’s needed. Other times, an older website may benefit from a larger redesign or rebuild.
Don’t Have Time to Manage It Yourself?
You don’t have to spend your time monitoring updates, troubleshooting website problems or wondering whether everything is working correctly.
DARR Designs provides website design, hosting, Website Care and ongoing Website Management services to help businesses keep their websites secure, current and working the way they should.
Need help with your website? Contact DARR Designs to discuss what your website needs.