Keeping your website up to date

It's important for both SEO (getting found in search engines) and your customers that your site is kept up to date.

When there are lots of businesses competing to come up in Google and other search engines for the same terms, how do the search engines pick who to show at the top? Well one of the ways (and there are lots of different ways) is that search engines may look for the site with the freshest content. A search engine's job is to show people the content that most suits what they're looking for, and it's very likely that some content written last week if more relevant to today's consumers than some content written 2 years ago.

Therefore, keeping your site up to date can be very beneficial to where your site ranks in search results. Search engines also love unique content which is why things like blogs (web logs – like a diary or journal you keep online) which allow you to easily write lots of new content for your site can really help with SEO.

Just as importantly though – if not more so – is that you need to present a professional and up to date front to your customers. If your site says “Merry Christmas – here are our 2007 offers” (I'm writing this in 2011!) then that might not distill the highest level or respect or trust in your company. You wouldn't leave an out of date poster up in your window, so you shouldn't leave out of date messaging on your website. The same goes for things like your opening hours – if these change, make sure this is reflected on your website. You would not be popular if someone turned up on a Sunday just to find you were closed whereas you used to be open from 10am! The opposite side of the coin is you don't want someone sat at home on a Sunday morning to look you up online and see that you're closed on Sundays and so not pay you a visit – when in actual fact you started opening on Sundays 3 months ago and just haven't updated your site.

Whilst things like the above examples are crucial so as not to give your customers false or out of date information, updates which aren't stricty necessary -such as a news post about an award you've won or a new service you offer – can still make your company look more like a living, breathing organisation and so more of an inticing proposition.