Remember the First Time?
I remember the first time I walked into my house. Not really in the market for a home, just weeks before our marriage, my wife and I went for a Sunday drive and randomly stopped at an open house. Four months later, unexpectedly and without really even attempting to sell, we somehow sold our house. We purchased and moved into this 100 year old character home, an intimidating change for a “handyman” like myself.
Fast-forward six years, while the structure still certainly remains intact (kind of), we’re in the never-ending process of making subtle, sometimes not-so-subtle improvements to our home. Seeing old photos are gentle reminders of when there was a wall here, when the living room was painted yellow or when our front entrance looked like a dry sauna.
On that moving day six years ago, if I had thought that after unpacking that last box, the work was complete, I soon learned the opposite to be true. The work had only begun.
Your Website is Never Complete.
Upon the launch of your website, you may feel relieved to finish and get back to making money. It may be a bit of a shocker, but I am a believer that your website is never complete. It needs to be an active outlet of information. We need to tell our customers both current, past and potential; what exactly we’ve been up to. Write blogs, add any new products or services you’ve launched, show off your latest projects, update social media depending on your market anywhere from monthly to almost hourly.
Customers aren’t the only ones you are updating for, there is a monster we call Google that loves fresh content. A website that is updated regularly boosts SEO results. While there are certainly many other factors that go into who gets on page one, at best, it will give you an edge on your competitors. At worst, it will allow you to keep pace.
More than trends
Much like the landscaping, home décor and thankfully not as often as the fashion industry, the web has evolving trends. Sometimes, they are aesthetic fads that seem to come and go, other times they are driven by changing technology.
To give you an example, years ago many companies had two websites, both web and mobile versions. This worked fine until the landscape changed and electronic manufacturers launched larger phone sizes, tablets and mini tablets. Suddenly, web developers had to deal with a wide array of screen sizes and two versions simply didn’t cut it anymore. They reacted by creating what is known as responsive design, it is one website that changes its own shape to fit virtually every device. That is more than a trend; it is an industry shift that is here to stay.
Digital Armageddon?
April 21, 2015 was a critical day in the web development world. Mobilegeddon as they call it, changed the search engine rules. Google suddenly rewarded websites that were mobile friendly, meaning traditional websites are now plummeting down in rank. It’s certainly not the only factor, Google considers much more than just the format of your site, but it’s a trend that isn’t going anywhere. If you weren’t convinced you needed a responsive site – you should be now.
Polar bear in a snowstorm – not anymore!
In years gone by, the amount of times you could list a “keyword” meant search engines considered your site to be more relevant to that search term. As a result, website content was created that may not have made actual sense in real world English, white text on a white background was utilized, content was repeated over and over again. Google’s intelligence has grown to realize, this isn’t real content. This was not getting users fair search results and the rules had to be rewritten. The days where writing “Your service name, Niagara” over and over again would bring you positive results are long gone. Today’s content must be unique, relevant to search terms and not repeated elsewhere on your site. Ensure that your website’s content wasn’t written with the old rules in mind.
Much like your childhood photo album, the web has a tool called the WayBack Machine. A digital time machine of sorts, it allows you to go back in your website’s past and view what we used to call your website. Warning! It’s embarrassing, shocking and almost endearing to remember what once was. Almost like a real time machine allowing me to walk through the doors of my house – again!