Read Time: 7 mins
What do a website and a dress bought for one occasion have in common? Nothing, they serve opposing purposes in the long term. I’ll explain, when you have a special occasion you want to be put together. Most often, Men wear the same suit they’ve worn for years, while woman go on the hunt for a new dress. Unlike the suit The dress is most likely only worn once and is thrown into the closet. It won’t be worn again because by the time the next wedding rolls around its out of style. A website is not like a woman’s dress you don’t wear it once, and then never wear it again. A website can be comparative to a plant, it takes time, patience, and nurturing for it to grow.
what does all that have to do with a website? To grow your business’ online presence, you must be consistently updating your services, photos, and content. This is essential for search engines like Google because they favour sites that have up to date content. In this post, we will go over 6 easy tips to keep your website up to date and flourishing.
Tip One: Create A Project Page
This is an easy tip and most sites already have a page similar to this one. The purpose of this page is to showcase your work to your future customers. The key is to make it look professional and a nice clean design.
Elviano a custom home builder, does an excellent job of this. They illustrate a lot more details in the overview compare to other websites I’ve seen. When you click the home of interest there is a separate page with a project summary, with lots of professional photos. This showcases to their client what they do, and how they look once they are complete.
Photos are so important as most of the time these are what the potential clients may be looking for. Make sure you have great photos to showcase, and never use bad photos on your site. If you need hire a professional to do your photos or take a class and learn. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words.
To go above and beyond, I would recommend linking that page to your blog. You can create fresh content you could do a step by step walkthrough of the project. In the blog you describe the process from start to finish. You can describe the process and how long certain stages take. This information gives the client a better understanding of how you work, along with the timeline of a build. Adding education available for your clients creates confidence and loyalty in your business.
Tip Two: Update Your Project Page Regularly
There is always something to do and your schedule is busy. We get it, updating your website is the last of your worries. You want to be providing the service and spending your time making money. With that said, it is important to ensure your potential clients see your newest projects. This only lengthens your track record and showcases that you are good at what you do.
Each trade may be different but for custom homes each project can take anywhere from 1-3 years, so updating content may only be required once per year. Otherwise, trades such as tile guys could be working on a job for a couple weeks before moving onto the next.
Posting frequently as possible is the best, but may not be possible with managing a business. You have to determine a timeline best for you. If you finish projects in a couple of weeks, you should do quarterly updates. While in general, my best recommendation is to update at the very least twice a year, adding photos, content, testimonials, posts, etc.
Also, remember that adding photos to your site is not enough. You have to format them in a way that search engines favour. We discuss more of this in our optimized imagines article (coming soon).
Also worthwhile to mention you should only post work that is high quality for your future clients to see. There will always be jobs that we have to take on to pay the bills, but make sure you only post the jobs that will attract your ideal client. Post the kind of jobs you like and want more of, and they will come your way.
If this is a struggle or something not for you Congraphix offers services to help maintain and update your website. Let us do the hard work for you. Contact us today.
Tip Three: Updating Plug-Ins on YourWebsite Regularly
A website is a beast that is changing while you sleep. With this in mind, providers are updating and improving plugins for websites. Plugins are installations on a website that add functionality that it didn’t have before. For example, a plugin that compresses images is used to increase site speed, while not compromising image quality. It’s important that you are on top of these updates as they may decrease your rankings.
How could it decrease your rankings you may ask? Well if a plugin is not up to date it may have glitches/bugs. It can also decrease rankings if there is a bad update that you installed. It could be a downgrade in usability which in turn can make the user turn away from your website.
Tip Four: Update Your Old Content
When you write something in the search box of a search engine what results do you find? Typically, you will find search results written within 5 years from your current date. For example, in November 2022 when you search “richest person in the world” You see that you get up to date results. By the time you read this article these articles will be out of date as people’s wealth changes day to day. Luckily trades and construction trends are not so quick to change, so you have ample amounts of time to stay fresh and up to date.
On this note, if you have written blog posts or an article it is critical that once in a while you update the blog post date. You can add some new information in your post and then change the date of the post in your web builder. Each website builder is different so to learn how to do this you can do a simple google search. I’ve attached links below for the most common website builders.
WordPress: Change Date of Post
Similarly, most contractor will write about estimating the cost of a service they offer. Prices tend to go up with time (unfortunately), do make sure your article is up to date. To give your potential clients the most current information.
Tip Five: Check for Any Broken Links
You’ve probably experienced this yourself, you’ve read through an article, clicked a link of interest only to find a 404 error page not found. This can be avoided by doing a check for broken links on your website and blogs.
To review your links on your website, Broken Link Checker
You’ve probably experienced this yourself, you’ve read through an article, clicked a link of interest only to find a 404 error page not found. This can be avoided by doing a check for broken links on your website and blogs.
To review your links on your website, Broken Link Checker
How do you repair a broken link on your site and blogs? You simply try and see if the original page is still available on the site but maybe renamed? If you do find it make sure to update the link and you should be good.
If the website no longer exists, find a resource similar to what you were linking to and update the link to the new site. Worst case if you cannot find what you are looking for delete the link all together. This ensures no one is disappointed or mislead when they click the link.
Tip Six: Review Or Remove
This tip is geared towards the companies that have had their websites up for a couple of years now. Specifically companies that have accumulated lots of content or old blog posts. If that’s you, it’s time to go back to those posts and see if they are accurate. Most likely you will find posts that are no longer apply or maybe you don’t offer that service anymore. Removing that content will eliminate your potential clients confusion or lack of trust.
This should be done yearly for trades and construction at the minimum. All you have to do is go into your previous posts and review if they still make sense. For example, if 10 years ago you did a review on the best paint suppliers and which type of paint to use for described paint applications. It’s best to check that this information is still true. As you may be recommending an old supplier that no longer exists or there are now better paint suppliers than the one you suggested.
Similarly, if you have written an article about something that no longer is true or may not exist. You will most likely have to remove this article. Doing so will not decrease your rankings it will actually improve them. This is because there is a change to your website so when search engines crawl your website they will see a change. The search engine will update accordingly and will crawl more frequently soon after to see if any additional changes have been made.
How These 6 Tips Help You Reach More People?
An easy way to improve your SEO on your website can be accomplished through updating, reviewing, removing, and adding new content. We discussed 6 tips to make sure your content is up to date and positioned you for better ranking.
You can start by adding fresh content, and up to date images to showcase your most recent work. Then you can work towards reviewing your content and removing posts that are no longer valid. During this process you will update the date of your article, and make sure all your links are functional. You stick to a schedule that works for you and you stay consistent.
Remember the hardest part is to start making content. Once you have the foundation you can build on it. This is easily done adding new insights or repurposing it into other forms. The ultimate goal is to show your clients you are professional, up to date, and are exactly what they are looking for.
By following these steps you increase the chance of all your content reaching clients. This is exactly what you need to get more jobs and more importantly higher quality clients to work with.
If you are unsure or don’t want the hassle of maintaining or updating your website let Congraphix do all the work for you. We can automate the process and keep up to date with your updates. You can also determine how often you would like to update based off your business. We work within your budget. To learn more or to contact click here.