Key takeaways:
- Website updates are strategic investments, not just for maintenance.
- Optimal website performance contributes to a positive user experience, influencing search engine rankings.
- Continuous improvement through data gathered and user feedback is important for long-term success.
Your website is one of potential customers’ first interactions with your brand, so it’s important to know how to update a website effectively. Regular website updates help you build trust, improve your search engine optimization (SEO), attract new customers, and retain them. A well-maintained site shows site visitors that your business is active, reliable, and invested in providing a positive experience.
Why should you update your website?
Website updates help you keep a strong online presence and achieve business goals. Here’s a breakdown of the key reasons why you should regularly do them.
- To build trust and credibility. Regularly updating your website to make it fresh and modern builds trust and credibility with your audience. It shows your business is active, professional, and trustworthy. Leaving websites out of date can make potential customers question your reliability.
- To improve SEO. Website updates also significantly improve your SEO. Search engines prefer websites with updated, relevant content and optimized technical performance. Updates to your site’s content and structure can improve your search engine rankings, encouraging more search visibility and organic website traffic, search visibility.
- To enhance overall user experience. A user-friendly website also enhances the overall user experience (UX). Updating your design, navigation, and functionality improves the UX and encourages users to explore and act on your site. Combine all these benefits, and you’ll have an effective and optimal website for your business.
1. Set clear goals for your website revamp
Before revamping a website, it’s important to pinpoint what you hope to achieve; it’ll help direct your efforts and establish measurable criteria for success.
The following are some aspects you can consider in formulating your goals.
Improve SEO
SEO involves optimizing website content, structure, and technical elements to improve search engine results pages (SERPs) visibility for relevant target keywords. Beyond “higher rankings,” specify which keywords you’re targeting and what traffic increase you expect; keyword research can help you with that aspect.
You should also consider metrics like organic website traffic volume, keyword ranking positions, and organic click-through rates. If local SEO is relevant to your business, consider it.
Increase engagement and conversion rate
Increased conversions call for more user engagement and visitors taking action, such as purchasing, filling out contact forms, subscribing to newsletters, or downloading resources. Define what “conversion” matters to your business, then break down the conversion goals into specific actions and quantify them.
For example, instead of “more purchases,” aim for “a 15% increase in online sales” or “a 10% increase in lead generation through contact forms.”
Analyze your conversion funnel to identify areas for improvement.
Enhance current brand identity
Refining your brand is about aligning your online presence with your values, audience, and goals. You can do this by reorganizing your website or adjusting your brand voice, leading to cohesion and consistency at every interaction.
Improve UX
Finally, improve your UX for a more intuitive and enjoyable visitor experience; improved navigation, faster loading speeds, and accessibility contribute to better UX.
You must also link your website revamp goals directly to your business objectives. For example, if you’re looking to increase sales by 20%, you can start by improving conversion rates on product pages by 15% and increasing organic traffic to those pages by 15%.
2. Evaluate your current website performance
On your way to updating your website, it’s important to have your starting point by looking at how your site is currently performing.
Key areas to evaluate include the following:
- Page speed. How long does it take for your site to load? Slow loading times can frustrate visitors and drive them away.
- Bounce rates. Are visitors leaving your site after seeing only one page? High bounce rates can indicate your content isn’t engaging or that users aren’t finding what they want.
- SEO rankings. Where do you rank for key searches? Poor rankings mean fewer people are finding you organically. Google Search Console can give you this information.
- Mobile-friendliness. Is your website designed for smartphones and tablets? It’s a crime not to have a mobile-friendly site in today’s mobile-first world.
Tools like Google Analytics, Search Console, and PageSpeed Insights can provide valuable data to help you assess these areas.
3. Identify outdated content and broken features
Addressing outdated or broken features within your website is important since they hinder overall performance and credibility. Here are some things you need to look for:
Outdated content
- Old blog posts and articles. Review your existing content for any inaccurate, irrelevant, or obsolete information. The following are some things you should look out for and consider revising or removing:
- Publication dates if they’re significantly older
- Products and service mentions if they’re still relevant
- Statistics and research if they’re still up to date
Old and irrelevant content doesn’t only erode credibility, but they can also affect searchability since search engines prioritize fresh and accurate content.
- Outdated company information. Double-check your “About Us” page, contact information, and any other pages that contain details about your company. Ensure that addresses, phone numbers, team member information, and your company’s mission and values are up to date.
Broken features
- Broken links. These links on your website no longer work, leading to error pages (often a 404 error). Broken links ruin user experience and signal to search engines that your site isn’t well-maintained, harming your rankings.
- Non-functional forms. Test all forms on your site, including contact, subscription, and order forms. Ensure they’re working correctly and that you’re receiving their submissions; faulty forms can lead to lost leads and sales.
- Technical glitches. Look for any technical glitches, such as errors in layout or display, slow-loading pages, or issues with mobile responsiveness.
4. Make strategic, new content
High-quality content is king, so strategic website updates are essential. Here’s how to make the most of your content:
- Refresh old blog posts. Update outdated information, add new data, and improve the overall quality of your existing blog content.
- Repurpose existing content. Maximize your content’s value by repurposing it into different formats (e.g., blog post to video) or updating it with new information.
- Update headlines and metadata. Optimize title tags and other metadata to improve SEO and attract more clicks from search results.
- Rework CTAs. See to it your calls to action (CTAs) are clear, compelling, and aligned with your current marketing campaigns.
- Add customer-centric content. Enhance your site with valuable content that addresses customer needs and questions, such as FAQs, testimonials, and updated product pages.
5. Improve website design and usability
A modern, user-friendly design is important to engage visitors and encourage them to stay on your web pages. Consider doing the following for a better website layout:
- Modernize your layout. Update the visual design to reflect current trends and your brand’s evolution.
- Improve navigation. Make your website’s navigation features easy and clear so visitors can find what they’re looking for.
- Enhance mobile responsiveness. Make sure your site runs flawlessly on all devices, especially mobile devices.
- Consider accessibility. Follow accessibility guidelines in your website design so it’s accessible to users with disabilities.
- Optimize visual hierarchy. Use visual elements to guide the user’s eye and highlight important information.
6. Enhance SEO and technical performance
Strategically implementing and optimizing technical SEO improves website performance. It involves optimizing the foundational elements of your website so that it is easily discovered by search engines and provides a fast and stable experience for users.
To update your website for optimal performance, focus on these key areas:
Improve loading times
Website loading speed is an important factor in UX and SEO. Here are some things you can do to speed up loading times.
- Optimize images by compressing them to reduce file size without sacrificing quality. Use appropriate image formats (e.g., WebP, JPEG, PNG) and consider lazy loading, where images are loaded only when visible in the user’s viewport.
- Choose a reliable hosting provider with a good reputation and reliable uptime. Consider also using a content delivery network (CDN) to distribute your website’s content across multiple servers.
- Leverage browser caching allows users’ browsers to store static assets (like images and CSS files) so they don’t have to download them whenever they visit a page.
Fix crawl errors and broken links
Keep your website structure healthy by fixing crawling, indexing, and linking issues. Here’s how to address potential issues:
- Identify crawl errors by using Google Search Console to identify any errors that prevent search engines from crawling and indexing your website’s pages. These might include server, redirect, or “not found” errors.
- Optimize your robots.txt file so they’re configured to guide search engine crawlers for accessing important pages. You can also create and submit a sitemap to Google Search Console; it helps search engines index your website’s pages more efficiently.
- Use a link checker tool to address broken links (both internal and external) in your site and redirect them to functional pages; they negatively affect UX and SEO.
Update schema markup
Implement schema markup (structured data) by adding it to your website’s HTML to give search engines more context about your pages’ content. Doing so can help search engines understand what type of content it is (e.g., a product, a recipe, an event) and display it more effectively in search results (e.g., rich snippets).
7. Gather feedback and test changes
Before fully launching your updated website, gather feedback and test your changes. Here are some ways to test and gather comments on your website.
- A/B testing. A/B testing runs two or more versions of a web page or element for comparison, helping you make data-driven decisions. Tools like Google Optimize or Optimizely randomly show these versions to visitors and track metrics like clicks or conversions.
- Heatmaps. Heatmaps help you visualize how users interact with your site, such as where they click and how far they scroll. You can use heatmap tools like Hotjar or Crazy Egg to see user behavior and highlighting areas of interest or improvement.
- User testing. Ask real users to test your site and provide feedback on their experience.
- Surveys. Collect feedback through simple surveys to understand user satisfaction and identify areas for improvement.
Use your feedback to adjust your updates and ensure the best possible results.
8. Promote your updated website
Okay, you’ve worked to update your website—fantastic! You have to promote your website at this point; start with social media posts, email newsletters, or blog posts detailing the improvements.
Don’t forget the search engines! Submitting an updated sitemap to Google Search Console will help Google discover and index all the fresh content and changes.
9. Track results and plan for ongoing updates
Website improvement is an ongoing process, so always monitor key metrics and identify areas for further improvement. Some key metrics to monitor include:
- Traffic
- Conversion rates
- Bounce rates
- Search engine rankings
After taking metrics into account, start scheduling regular content, design, and SEO audits to keep your website updated. To streamline these ongoing efforts, consider using various tools or templates to help with analytics, SEO analysis, and content management.
Level up your website with Network Solutions
Updating your own website isn’t just about aesthetics but also real results. By focusing on UX, SEO, and valuable content, you can create a website that engages customers and supports your business goals.
If you want to improve your website, Network Solutions is here to help with website building. We provide an efficient way to create and maintain a professional, high-performing website. With intuitive drag-and-drop interfaces, customizable templates, and built-in SEO tools, you can upgrade your online presence and achieve your business goals.
