Design Solutions Resources
Website Update Checklist
Essential to high search results for your business is a website that is kept fresh with new content added and frequently updated. In addition to the site is the representation of your business on relevant online and social media platforms, with business image and message consistent throughout all platforms. In a nutshell, a properly developed website builds and maintains high search engine position when efforts are made to add to the site with quality content on a consistent basis. A website that is stagnant won't be easily found, allowing the competition to gain ground that may be insurmountable, in a never-ending game of catch-up.
Is your online strategy developed with website updates and additions as part of that strategy? While adding new pages is essential, so is a process that ensured all bases are covered. Your online infrastructure should include the website with pages that details and showcases your products, services, portfolio, case studies, and your expertise, updated and added-to often. The website should include both a sitemap page and sitemap XML file, as well as a robots text file which tell search engine bots what and where to crawl, to list and display your website, and the information you want shown.
With the business information and image consistent, your business should be represented on at least LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, with new content deployed and linked to pages throughout your site. The infrastructure should also include your business represented on sites relevant to your industry, the products or services, an business expertise.
With that established, the monthly maintenance and additions to your site should consist of:
New content written and added to the site on existing pages and new pages, with all corresponding links in the site updated. Using that new content to create posts deployed throughout your social media platforms and other online platforms, linking back to the corresponding pages on your site. An often overlooked step is ensuring the website pages are properly coded to show the correct info, descriptions, and images upon the share, with the page's code including the
OG: Image Protocol which defines what image is previewed on the share via social media.
A description of the new content with links added to other pages throughout the site, with the pages then uploaded to the hosting server, with a new date on link info in the sitemap file. This approach enables relevant pages to be kept fresh even though there is no new content added to the page besides the link and info. For example in an area of the home page the text could say latest articles with a short description, using the interface on multiple pages. Relevant info and corresponding links in other pages need to be added and updated, with name and title tags in new links updated.
Creating new pages or updating pages with info that showcases your expertise and helps strengthen your online visibility. As stated above, this content is shared on the social and online platforms where your business is represented. Any new pages added in this approach need to be added to the sitemap. Any changes to pages need to be shown in the time & date stamp in the Sitemap.xml file, then uploaded to the hosting server.
The website processes that should be consistently executed includes:
Removing old pages that are no longer used in the site, using redirects to send visitors to the relevant or corresponding pages.
A business profile developed from your Google search result with important business information, photos, and content, using the application "
Google My Business" to edit and update your Google business profile. Content that was created for the website and social media platforms can be posted in your Google page with links to the page in the site. The website strategy should incorporate efforts for Google in addition to website additions and social media content.
In addition to building new content for the site and using that content with social media to work with your site, an essential step in the website maintenance should include keeping the existing pages and the overall site content updated., Both with new content added to the existing pages and the update and additions to the existing writing to strengthen and build-on the business value, differentiators, and selling proposition. This approach also deepens the value throughout the pages of the site, ensuring eventual high positioning. In addition to strengthening your brand and brand value, this approach keeps pages the site fresh for search engines to see, strengthening the elements that increase your online visibility.
In this approach to building on brand value, existing content is deepened through the writing, the addition of content, and the addition of pages.
Using this approach, we were able to maintain the 11+ number one overall, top 3, nine of ten first page Google search results for multiple terms for Walnut Advisory.
This approach and step should be planned out as there is a lot of important and dependent steps that need to be part of this process. For any page updated, the date & time sitemap on the page in the sitemap should be updated. This tells and shows search engines the page has new information and should be re-crawled. Sections to be crawled can be added to the robots file.
Develop a schedule and process for the website updates that ranges from maximum to minimum efforts to ensure the site is kept fresh even at the busiest of times when time is at a premium.
Additional efforts include using offline marketing like direct mail to drive traffic to the site and specific pages of the site.
Building independent and unique websites that represents your services, products, or as a marketing campaign, driving traffic to your site, or with information consistent and reflective of the information on your primary website, enabling both sites to work together in a well-planned strategy.