By Evan Vitale
When is the last time you really updated your company’s website? If you don’t know the answer, then it’s probably time to give it a fresh coat of “paint” and re-fresh it a little bit.
Now, I’m not talking about scraping your entire website and starting all over again. Instead, there are many small things you can update that will help improve your overall business image and, perhaps, earn your website higher rankings in Google and other search engines. For instance:
– Make sure your business contact information is accurate. This includes your complete business address, telephone numbers, FAX number (if you still use a fax), best e-mail address in case someone wants to send you an e-mail, business hours of operation, etc. The hours of operation is extremely important and, unfortunately, many businesses either do not list their hours or they are incorrect.
– Update all pictures on your website. Believe me. Your current pictures are probably old and stale. This is especially true for your staff. I’ve seen businesses where staff photos were missing or businesses listed staff members who were no longer with the firm. Your customers like seeing a picture on your website of who they are talking to on the telephone. It goes a long way with customer service.
– Update your products and service offerings. Remove anything you are no longer offer and, by all means, update your website and include information on new products and services. If you’re a heating and cooling company, your website’s home page might want to focus more on heating services during the winter months and air conditioning services during the summer months. Unfortunately, I’ve seen many HVAC sites that are promotion furnace tune-ups in the middle of July!
– Create a blog. Your website will go a long way in earn more traffic; more customers and higher rankings in Google and other search engines if you create a blog page and post regularly to it. A blog is like a diary. Here, you can write about your company, interview staff members, write about how your product solves a problem, etc. In fact, this “article” here on my website is actually a blog post. I would recommend that you write a minimum of one (1) blog post per week and go from there.
– Review every page on your website for update possibilities. If your content is old, consider re-writing it from a different angle or point of view.
See? That wasn’t too painful. You don’t need to update your website in a weekend, but you can certainly start by making it a point to update at least 1 or 2 pages per week. Consider hiring a freelance writer you can help you with content updates and, perhaps, he/she can get you started with a couple of blog posts.