The temperatures are finally rising and it is starting to really feel like spring around here! I don’t know about you but I am extremely excited to hear the sounds of birds chirping and am thoroughly enjoying watching the trees and flowers start to bloom. It makes me smile. There is just something about spring that makes me feel refreshed. Maybe it’s the annual spring cleaning that happens around my house every year.
But spring cleaning isn’t just a thing for your home. You can apply it to all aspects of your life, including your work environment. So, let’s ditch the mop and broom and trade it in for a keyboard, mouse and monitor. It’s time to spring clean your website. Follow the simple steps below in order to clean, polish, maintain and organize your website before the summer sun sets in.
Out with the old and in with the new
You want to keep your page up to date with all of the things you are currently doing. This means you can’t have old promotions for events or irrelevant content that no longer applies to your company. If you highlight an event on your site from five months ago, people will think you don’t care and you aren’t reliable for trustworthy content. Outdated content can also hurt your SEO so make sure everything is up to date.
Give it a fresh polish
After finding any outdated information, it’s time to spruce it up. Just because some of the content seems old or outdated, doesn’t mean a small facelift won’t throw some life into it. New facts or other information that is relevant can provide a nice boost to traffic from areas like social media, blogs or other content sharing locations that may not have seen the information before. You may even want to add some new pictures, infographics or videos.
Preventative maintenance
This part takes a little attention to detail but helps ensure your site is properly functioning. While most technical issues are fixed when they arise, there are some that can be hidden. It is a good idea to check over each page of your website and make sure the following things are happening:
• Easy navigation
• Consistency
• Pages load quickly
• Functioning links
• No typos
• Content related to search engine descriptions is correlated with each page
Organize
If you haven’t already, make sure to set up a content schedule to keep you organized. This will make your spring cleaning a heck of a lot easier. Once you have created a content schedule, make sure you stick to it and post the content when you say you are going to. With a steady flow of content, people will want to come back to your site because there will always be something new for them.
Once the spring cleaning process is over, you should reward yourself by taking a minute to enjoy some of that fresh spring air. After all, cleaning out your website will not only make your visitors happy, but it will make your website among the trustworthy. If you take care of your website, chances are high that Google will notice and will help improve your ranking which in turn should lead to more business in the future.
~ Bethany Howell, art director
