Positive Reasons To Update Your Website Content

Are you struggling to update your website? Here are some positive reasons why you can (and should) stay on top of it. If the motivation to blog has been lost, do the good thing and reclaim it!

In some cases, content editing is handed to your copywriter or SEO consultant. In an ideal world, you arrange this together and work as a team to ensure the website continues to thrive in the months after launch.

Otherwise, it’s the responsibility of the business owner to make changes themselves. If this is the case, it’s important that you are a) motivated and b) reassured enough to know that editing your website is normal, harmless and downright fun!

3 Positive Reasons To Get Stuck In!

1 Making Updates Shouldn’t Break Your Website

Many people are hesitant to login and makes changes because with all the tools and plugins floating around, they might break something.

This should not be the case. A website that’s been sensibly built should be clutter free to the user. Areas that developers need access to should be cordoned off to the client so that there’s no chance they can accidentally take the website offline. The worst you should be able to do is format text in a funny way, or accidentally bin a page. These sorts of changes are reversible and shouldn’t put you off making routine edits.

If your site dashboard is full of unnecessarily bells and whistles, contact you developer. In most CMSs it’s possible to create an “Editor” account that’s limited to publishing and editing. That way you can login knowing that everywhere you go is safe and functional.

2 New Content Is Good For Google

As you might have guessed, Google’s crawlers are incredibly sophisticated. They can detect the quality of writing, the topics discussed and the frequency of when a website is updated.

If a website is left cold and stagnant, it doesn’t get crawled an awful lot. If it’s regularly updated, Google will send its crawlers there more regularly. That doesn’t mean you’ll rank higher, but it does mean that new content will be recognised. Do you like the sound of fresh and relevant? Then get posting!

3 Updating Your Website Gets Easier

I dare say it even becomes quite fun! Like any habit, the first couple of occasions feel weird. However, the more you get used to logging in, finding the right pages and pressing publish, the easier it becomes.

Not only this, but you’ll find that you improve as a writer. You’ll notice that what you first submitted to the designer differs greatly from later edits. That makes another reason to update your website: if you leave it alone at launch, you’ll never see the opportunities for improvement that you’d get from regular pruning.

Common Gripes About Updating Websites

“I don’t know what to write about”

I get this. When you first think about it, it’s difficult to map out the various pages and topics you might write about in future expansions. The thing is, whatever your profession, there’s LOADS to write about. So much, in fact, that the topic deserves its own blog entry. Meta!

“I’ve Written An About Us Page Already”

Yes, you probably wrote 400 glorious words to go in your “our company” page. You might have gone the extra mile and optimised it to suit certain key phrases and search terms. However, did you create landing pages for each individual service? Does your FAQ page need chopping up into subsections? Are customers coming to you with the same questions that aren’t covered on your website?

It’s highly unlikely that everything you need to say has been written already. There’s always wiggle room for additional articles, landing pages and useful content for your readers. With a sensible site structure, these pages can be added in a way that isn’t stuffy or overwhelming.

“I don’t have the time”

This I get. It’s hard, especially if you run your own business, to set aside time for blogging and website updates.

My advice is this – shape it around your schedule. You don’t have to go straight into your website to write content or make amendments. Take screenshots, copy and paste into notepad apps or just jot phrases on notepaper when you’re travelling. The draft of this very blog post was typed on a train journey from London Paddington to Bedwyn. I hammered out the broad strokes on my phone, then edited it properly when I got some time on the computer.

But maybe you really don’t have time, at which point I’d recommend outsourcing this kind of work to a skilled copywriter…