How Often Should You Update Your Website?

How Often Should You Update Your Website?

If you’re selling products or services online, your website is your shop window. And like any bricks and mortar shop window, it will soon look stale if your site is neglected. Which doesn’t necessarily mean you need a complete redesign; small changes can be just as effective. In this article, the Imagefix team answers the question ‘how often should you update your website?’ with a practical and cost-effective plan for regular updates.

Why Update Your Website?

First and foremost, your website is the first impression visitors get of your business, so it makes sense to keep the design fresh, contemporary, and welcoming. Website updates are about far more than just the look of your site though. Updating your website also ensures that:

• Your content remains accurate and relevant.
• Your SEO continues to attract new leads.
• Your site is safe for users to input their data and financial information.
• Features on your site perform efficiently.
• You retain your ranking in the Search Engines.
• A Plan For Updating your Website
A website needs constant tending to in order to keep it updated and a joy to visit. It helps, therefore, to have a plan. We’ve collected together the major updating tasks and added the frequency with which they need your attention.

Plugin Updates (WordPress Sites) – Schedule Monthly

If you have a WordPress site, you’ll have a number of plugins powering your contact forms, features, and SEO tools. Regular updates ensure that the plugins remain secure, and that they continue to work efficiently. Also, because plugins are coded from scratch, there are often updates from the designers which improve their performance.

If you don’t have a site management package, you can update plugins yourself.

Content SEO Updates – Every 3 Months

Optimised content uses keywords to help search engines match your site to online queries. You will most likely have had your site SEO optimised at the time of your latest web design, and that work will have given you the ranking you now have in Google. If you wish to retain, or improve your Google ranking, you’ll need to update your SEO strategy regularly.

If you haven’t come across SEO before, Moz offers an excellent introduction to the techniques involved.

Content Updates – Weekly

Google considers websites to be an organic source of information for online consumers, and – as such – they promote sites that are dynamic. This means that they are constantly adding to their content, evolving old content into new, or finding innovative ways to add value for visitors. Types of content you may wish to create include:

• Blogs (600 words or more).
• News articles about your brand.
• New web pages, product descriptions, R&D intros.
• Different types of imagery.
• Videos, how to animations.
• Customer feedback.

Design Refresh – Every 1-2 Years

Website design trends come and go and – dependent on the sector you’re in – you’ll want your site to reflect them. Font, or colour changes can give your site a completely different feel, and they’re not as time consuming as a complete re-design. It’s worth contacting a web design agency to ask how you could give your site a lift, without radically altering the navigation and theme.

Complete Redesign – Every 4-5 Years

Websites are not meant to last forever. The technology that drives them ages quickly and, after a while, the site simply can’t function as well as it once did. Another reason for a redesign is the evolution of your business; over a 5-year period you’ve most likely made big changes to what you do and how you do it. Your website should reflect that.

A website redesign not only increases your online impact, working with a creative web design team also gives your brand an excellent opportunity to review and refresh itself.

About the Author

Amanda Price - Digital Content Executive and Researcher for Imagefix | After joining the Imagefix team, she brought to the business an expertise in social media, copywriting and blogging.

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