Content marketing teams are often encouraged to create new, better, brighter blog posts and product pages to entice interest. In an environment like this, it's easy to forget to update your website. Who has time to look at the old when you're so busy building something new?
While some types of website updates are time-consuming (looking at you, redesigns!), others are relatively quick and have big benefits.
Here are four simple ways to ensure your content always looks fresh, even if it's been around for years.
Update Your Website Copyright
It's sad but true. The copyright at the bottom of many websites doesn't update automatically. Instead, we're all required to open up our settings and check the pesky date.
I've seen some website administrators use a range of dates (such as "2020 and onward"), but I'm not sure that's the best approach. An accurate footer with the current year typically appears on a site that someone is actively managing. If you want your readers to trust you, ensure that your footer is as accurate and precise as possible.
Check Your Old Content
Are your visible blog posts indicative of the work you do right now? Do you have product pages that no longer fit in your business model? Have you expressed opinions you no longer agree with?
If your site has been around for years, you probably have a page or two that's outdated and not worth revisiting. Pull these pages back to draft form, so they're no longer visible to your potential customers.
Once per month, pull reports on your content and look for low-performing and high-performing pages. Typically, the content you want to pull down will appear in one of these two lists. By performing a regular review, you'll save yourself the time and hassle outdated information can cause.
Update Your Links
Connecting to outside resources is considered a web writing best practice. However, it only works if you're sending your readers to accurate, available information. Checking your links is a critical part of keeping your site up-to-date.
I use free broken link checkers (like this one from Ahrefs) to crawl my site and spot potential problems. If I identify a broken link and have time to fix it, I look for a new source and rewrite accordingly. If I don't have time to fix it, I delete the sentence or graph that contains the link.
Refresh Your Images
In the rush to publish new content, you may have slapped an image on a page as a placeholder. If you have a bit of free time during your day, updating those images could provide big benefits. If the content is very old, the images might also need a refresh.
For example, if you published a lot of content during 2020, you probably have plenty of images of people wearing masks. A 2024 reader could spot this problem instantly and trust you less as a result.
Hire an Expert to Update Your Website
If you don't have time to perform these sorts of updates, hire someone to help you. A consultant could crawl your website and provide a month or two of to-dos you can tackle when you have time. Talented freelancers could even do these tasks for you. If you need help, contact me! Let's have a conversation about how I can help.