how to care for your site — feed it
January 17, 2019
written by
Rex Vokey
your site is alive. keep it that way by feeding it.
As we’ve said in past posts, the modern website can’t just be left there to fend for itself. What do you need to do to keep it alive?
fresh content
Like a pet, your website needs to regularly be fed content to keep it healthy. No, you can’t go buy fresh content at the farmer’s market. But you can buy it from an agency or create it yourself. Don’t let your site die by adding and updating the content on your site minimally on a weekly basis. Maybe even consider starting and maintaining a blog. You’ll need to maintain a schedule of posts, so make sure you’ve got that content queued up! The easiest way to do this is by planning ahead with a content strategy. Know when big events happen, holidays, and make sure you get topics for down weeks. 3FO does a content schedule each quarter with dates, authors, and topics all calendared out.
keep those search engines happy
Speaking of fresh content, SEO is vital to your content strategy. You spent a pretty penny on SEO, so don’t let that work wither and die. You should continually review your keywords, meta data, and 301 redirects for alignment with what’s getting conversions on your site. The internet gods have granted us visibility into the data of your website so make sure you review your website performance monthly. If you don’t know what we’re talking about, shoot us a message and we’ll guide you.
uh-oh! Google just changed the rules again – slow site?!
Stay on top of your speed. In the name of a good User Experience for the whole internet, Google is constantly updating its rules about what makes a fast site. The super-fast site you built last year might not be considered fast anymore. Sometimes the changes are simple, but often they require some in-depth work. If you want to be Google’s star student, you have to stay on top of this. Get your web developer to do an audit monthly and make any updates. Otherwise, you’ll slip backwards and have to work twice as hard to get your site fast AND to recoup the losses in SEO that google is going to assign your site.
that’s not all
This is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s one thing to have a site that just exists on the interwebs. It’s an entirely different thing to have a site that actually works to bring you business. You have to put work into it!