More often I am being approached by possible clients who have an old creaky, stagnant website. Possibly built by a well meaning relative or friend which even with their best intentions may look rather amateurish, or by an unknown developer who has built a site for them and left them without any follow up or care plan for how the site should / will develop as time moves on.
Either way, this is not how you want to portray your business online. Your site may have expired and you have lost your domain; you may now have a totally unresponsive site ( this is a site that is not mobile or tablet friendly). You may have a site that has not been updated content wise or security related wise since it first went live. You may have a site with missing images, broken links, terrible grammar and or spelling.
Well, if you care for how your business is portrayed online then the above needs to change. All these points I have mentioned will have a staggeringly negative impact on how Google and other search engines will rank you never-mind not impressing anyone who does stumble upon your site ( and if they do, they will probably leave as quick as they came in.)
If you fall into any of the failings I mentioned above read on…..
Responsive web design
If your site is unresponsive your website will now be flagged on mobile and tablet searches as such and or dropped down where you appear on mobile searches. (See our post on this Look good on your mobile or get over-looked)
How do I know if my website is unresponsive? Take the Google Mobile Friendly Test
If after running the test it shows your site as non responsive, you need to seriously start thinking about a redesign.
Enough with the Stagnant Content. Get fresh!
If your site hasn’t been updated since it went live or barely updated, you need to focus on creating new fresh and relative content. Doing so shows that you care about your visitors / prospective customers. New content is not only a way to attract new customers but encourage repeat custom. Fresh relative content will improve your Search Engine rankings as will more traffic coming to your site. And how do I get more traffic? – have fresh content!
Be Secure
On a security side of things, you also need to ensure you have any themes (bespoke or customised) and plugins etc kept up to date to minimize the risk of cyber attacks. Most CMS (content managed sites will require security updates. Have you any plan in place with your designer to ensure your site is kept up to date in this regard? If you have no notion as to answer to that, you’re probably not covered.) Work out a maintenance plan with your developer / designer to keep you as safe online as possible.
Get Social
Where appropriate, build on your social media. Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc. All will, if managed properly, build your brand and help you engage with your customers. If you do not have time to do this, try and work out a plan with your designer and let them keep everything fresh on all platforms. We are more than happy to do this. Having a good following on social media sites that are linked into your main business site is yet another factor in advancing your search engine rankings.
After reading this, I think I need a new website. Contact Jollyfox
