ClarityWEB Article
Why your website needs continued effort
A website is the solution to every company problem under the sun, correct?
You'll commission a website and within weeks the orders will be pouring through your door and you'll be contacting the local yacht dealership and arranging that berth in the Bahamas!
If only. All too often a business will commission a website that, for no reason other than not knowing any better, they expect to go live and begin delivering customers and brand awareness on an increased scale with no effort on their part.
The reality is very different. Building an online presence and ensuring it delivers the results you want is directly commensurate with effort - and the effort that your web design company puts into your site is only a fraction of what will be required.
Website Owner + Time + Effort + Input = Reward
If you take your website online and intend never to touch it again, perhaps even allowing for the odd annual freshen-up, you're not making your investment of money work for you. In fact you can pretty much bet on being disappointed within a very short space of time. The rewards your site gives you will be minimal.
Your web design company can do everything to perfection but without changing content, and content that is valued by your visitors, your site will not be favoured by the search engines you crave (unless you're very lucky to be the only company in a very niche market in a surreal world where you have no competition online!).
Static content is of little value. Google in particular cites high ranking on websites that offer value, information of interest and content that changes on a regular basis. Furthermore, Google will place an emphasis on original content. If all you're going to do is regurgitate the press release that everyone in your industry received last week then you shouldn't expect the world from it. It is certainly better than nothing, but originality is the key to maximising ranking of your site.
Asking your web design company to ensure your site has a Content Management System (CMS) that allows you to dynamically adjust the textual and photographic content of it will pay back dividends that make the original extra investment well worth it.
It's not rocket science..
The science of this isn't particularly difficult to grasp either. If you placed the same, unchanged, advertisement in your local newspaper each and every week, how long do you think its attraction would last to readers? It might help you build awareness of your brand but even the most subtle advertising campaigns are carefully adjusted, manipulated and changed over time. If, however, you construct a lasting, original and changing campaign - your audience becomes captive; even sub-consciously. These basics apply even more in a medium where speed of change, the most up-to-date information and an expectation of the very latest developments in news and products is taken for granted by visitors.
So, the message is simple. If you're looking to develop a website, improve your existing site or increase traffic to it - look no further than ensuring you are in a position to populate it with original, interesting and relevant content that your visitors will value and the search engines will covet.
It doesn't matter how advanced online media gets, one thing will remain a priority - you get out of it what you put into it. That saying of days gone by has never been truer than today.
Spread the Word
What works?
There are a variety of ways of ensuring your website delivers content that search engines will rate.
To begin with, and we can't stress this strongly enough, make sure that the content you update your website with is original and relevant.
Don't just copy and paste articles from competitor sites. Even unoriginal articles can be given a twist and a new angle of approach. It's much better to put the time and effort into thinking of brand new and original items that your visitors will value (hints, tips, etc) but a different view of a story that already exists is much better than nothing at all.
Relevance is critical. If you're selling babies clothes and all you ever do is update the news section of your site with details of staff changes - it may be relevant to your company but it isn't relevant to the products you sell in respect of how search engines rank your website. Mix content, think about it and ensure it is entirely appropriate to the type of customer you want to attract.
Frequency is also imperative. Many companies tend to think that once a month updates will suffice - but this is the digital age and information moves quickly. If a once a month strategy is all you plan for then you can expect someone, somewhere, who is almost certainly in competition with you, to better what you do by a significant margin.
Don't update for the sake of it, but try to give weekly updates as a minimum. Even the smallest of relevant changes to site content can have a huge impact on how search engines view your business.
The main consideration is actually a very simple one - the internet isn't a solution to an ailing business and you can go back centuries but you'll still find that the companies that performed best are those that innovated, created and worked harder than their competition.
Little has changed!
First Time Online?
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