Is it Time to Refresh Your Website?

It’s just a website…I don’t need to spend money on it, right?

WRONG!

It’s 2021 and your website is the number one way for you to establish credibility as a business. Additionally, it is an essential piece of your online presence and marketing strategy. 

Okay, but if I already have a website, I’m good. I can just let it be, right?

Sorry, wrong again.

Refreshing your website is ALWAYS a good idea. Here’s why:

Why It’s Important to Keep Your Website Design Up to Date

Mobile Friendliness

If you’ve been in business for a long time, it’s entirely possible that you had a website before smartphones were even a thing. That also means that when you first created your website, you didn’t have to think about making it responsive to the device it was being viewed on, or in other words, mobile friendly. But these days, 61 percent of U.S. website visits and 68.1 percent of worldwide website visits are performed on mobile devices. If you’re still not convinced, Google just rolled out Mobile-first indexing. This means that Google algorithms will “eventually primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site, to understand structured data, and to show snippets from those pages in our results.” The bottom line: If you want people to find your website and spend time on it, you have to make it mobile friendly.

Overall Visual Appeal

Once again, time changes everything—including standards of visual appeal. Often times, a website is a potential customer’s first impression of a business. Your site may have looked amazing and modern 5, 10 or 15 years ago. But now it may look dated, which reflects poorly on your business. Updating the design of your site every few years is important if you want to appear relevant to your client base.

Coding Standards

Best practices for coding change every year. So, if your website was created several years ago, it may have a lot of unnecessary code, which will negatively impact load speeds, Google search rankings, mobile friendliness, and more.

Why It’s Important to Keep Your Website Content Up to Date

Your Audience Will Be Better Informed

Adding content to your website consistently, such as publishing a new blog post every month, builds loyalty with your subscribers, keeps your audience engaged, and increases the amount of returning web traffic to your site, which is very important for search result rankings.

Demonstrate That You’re an Authority in Your Field

Adding to and updating your website content shows search engines and your client base that you are an expert in your field and that they should trust you to provided them with the product or service you are selling. 

Your Site Will Be Indexed by Search Engines

Updating and adding new content to your website triggers search engines to look at your website more often. Every time a search engine indexes new content on your website, it increases the odds that your business will show up higher in search engine rankings. This makes it easier for your client base to find you.

Google Will Love You

You likely already know this, but Google is the King of Search Engines and has the biggest influence on how websites are built. One thing that Google LOVES is frequent content updates. So, optimizing your site consistently and often is a great way to rank higher in search results.

You’ll Increase Your Number of Keywords

Adding new content to your website allows you to add new keywords and update the ones currently on your website, which is yet another way of positively impacting your ranking in search results.

Why It’s Important to Keep Your Website Security Up to Date

Unfortunately, cybercriminals are always coming up with new ways to hack websites, which may include deleting data, stealing sensitive data, selling said data, or inserting malicious software onto your server. If your website is hacked and client information is exposed, your clients will lose trust in you, and it could cost your company thousands of dollars. That’s why one of the most important reasons for keeping your website up to date is to keep it as secure as possible.

So, are you ready to refresh your website now?

Here at Zacaw, we coach and create efficient web design, dynamic integrations, membership sites and marketing that works. Contact us today to find out how we can help you keep your website up to date. 

Let’s create something awesome together!