Keeping Your Website Up-to-date

There’s nothing worse than a website that looks out of date. Sites whose last news entry or blog post is dated 2008 really make a site look unloved and somewhat dilapidated.   Conversely, a website whose information is bang up to date gives the impression that the site is alive, vibrant and valued. When you consider that many people will gain their first impression of your company from your website this is a very serious issue.

I was moved to write this article by 2 clients that I’ve recently been dealing with. Both were using our fantastic, cutting edge content management system (sorry about the shameless plug!), one wanted the news function activated and one wanted a blog installed.

On discussing the issue of relevancy and keeping these areas up-to-date, both clients were sat here committing to between 1 and 2 hours per week to keep their site up to date. This is great in principle but realistically we’re all very busy and that kind of commitment would soon wain leaving their stunning, cutting edge, content managed website (there I go again!) to quickly become out of date.

In my professional option it’s far better to put aside 30 minutes a month and approach this task strategically than trying to dedicate time you don’t have to updating the world in respect of your business. Unless you have the resource to do it, there’s no real need to update more than once a month, after all it’s not like we’re running the BBC news website!

So, here are my tips to strategically updating your website using only 30 minutes per month.

1. Diarise your time: It’s a pretty common phenomenon to commit to things that you never get round to. By booking 30 minutes per month in your diary for the next 12 months, you’re far more likely to achieve your goal.

2. Don’t be too precious about your material. Obviously it needs to be well written and interesting but you can write blog articles and news about pretty much anything – here are some ideas

- Something that recently happened in your company
- A new client that’s recently come on board (like a case study)
- A story about something that has happened to a client
-  Something that’s recently happened in your industry
- A comment on a news story that is relevant to your industry (search BBC News for such an article)

3. Focus your article on your audience, so if you’re writing for the benefit of business owners, keep this in mind when writing the articles, write professionally and remember what drives them. If you’re writing for the general public then a more chatty tone of voice may be appropriate.

4. Feel free to use someone else’s material! So long as you reference it correctly and fairly this should be fine. There are many sources where you can pick up free content for your website (see our Free Website Content article).

5. Finally, fresh content has a search engine pay off, in general the more words on your site the better your chances of getting listed in the search engines so bear this in mind when writing an article. If you like pick a key phrase that relates to your business and the article and see how many times you can repeat it without making the article sound like it’s just been written for keywords.

NB This is a critical point, your primary focus is on people that read it – search engines are important but if your website text gives the impression that you are illiterate then your website will give a negative impression of your company.

6. Get yourself a guest writer. As business people we’re all looking for publicity so to be listed on someone else’s website (especially if you’re offering a link to their own website) is beneficial to them and to you as it gives you a free and easy article – a win win!

So there you have it – follow these steps and you will be writing focussed, search engine friendly, customer centric articles quickly and easily using just 30 minutes per month. As a great meerkat once said…”Simples”.

Quick Website Tips

Why not set up a series of quick tips and email them to everyone on your email contact list and put them on your blog – if they’re short enough they’ll probably be read and they won’t take more than a couple of minutes to put together. They will also help to promote you as an expert in your field and help you to be remembered when the recipient is in need of your product or service.

One of the biggest issues we, as website owners, have is finding or creating fresh content for our websites. Fresh website content achieves a couple of things. First it keeps your website looking fresh, interesting and cared for encouraging people to visit regularly. Second, fresh website content for search engines is like a honey pot for bee’s. Not to mention all of the extra keywords you’ll be able to get in.

I thought I’d share with you a great source of free website content – WikiHow. This is how they describe themselves:-

wikiHow is a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. With your contributions, we can create a free resource that helps millions of people by offering solutions to the problems of everyday life. wikiHow currently contains 56,164 articles — written, edited, and maintained primarily by volunteers.

wikiHow allow you to reprint their articles at the price of a few embedded links and a direct backlink! They feature articles covering a massive range of subjects so there should really be something to suit everyone.

Free text – nice and easy. You can find wikiHow here:- http://www.wikihow.com.

Enjoy!!!

Having recently read the 1 minute manager, I recently had a look around at other stuff by the same author. Interestingly I came across a book that I’ve heard mentioned  all over the place, “Who Moved My Cheese”.

Having looked around the internet I then discovered that they’ve made a cartoon! it appears below – a great parable about change management:-

I recently put together a presentation for a group of business people in Winchester.  This led me to research some internet statistics which I thought I would share.

• 108 million searches each day in the uk
• In 2008, 16 million households in Great Britain (65 per cent) had Internet access.
• 56% of UK households had broadband in 2008.
• 88% of businesses have broadband or access to broadband
• During this recession high street sales have suffered but internet sales continue to soar:- This is from the office of National Statistics – Average weekly value of internet retail sales in January 2009 was approximately £178 Million, an increase of 17% on last year.

If you want to see a breakdown of internet statistics check it out here:- http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/irs0209.pdf

One of the things all designers have come across is the ‘left a bit, right a bit’ client designer phenomenon.

 At the end of the day, we believe that clients should have exactly what they want – our approach is to advise boldly based on our experience and expertise. However, if a client really wants a flashing pink border and a giant animation in the middle of their site then, so long as we’ve communicated our concerns clearly, that really is the clients decision to make – after all it is their website.

This video is something I came across recently that I’m sure will touch a nerve with web designers and graphic designers alike – it had me rolling on the floor with laughter.

Even though we are a web design company (as opposed to an internet marketing agency), I find that we are constantly advising on techniques that our clients can use to really improve their usage of the internet in generating leads and sales. Over the next few months I’m going to start putting some information together relating to emarketing and what we, as Small to Medium Sized businesses can do without spending a great deal of cash.

Marketing is a percieved as a bit of a black art generally, throw the feared element of technology into the mix and for some the terror is too much. Many have been burnt by experiences with marketeers who really don’t know their arse from their elbow (I know we have!), others just don’t know where to begin.

As a web design firm who offers intensive, ongoing support to our clients following a website build we are often asked about internet marketing.

There are many different strands of internet marketing and none of them are difficult to do. Over the next months I’m going to introduce the ones that I consider to be the most powerful techniques  to help you make the most of the opportunities that are available. The things I’ll be discussing are:-

• Autoresponders: Automatically send a series of timed emails to a new contact (perhaps one a week or one a month)
• Blogs: Add some personality to your company, show off your knowledge and make search engines fall in love with you!
• Online Networking: Linked In, Ecademy etc.
• Social Networking: Do you sell to the public? Ever considered getting a fanbase together?
• Email marketing: get your message out there – cheap, fast and efficient (but be careful not to annoy anyone).
• Putting it all together: It’s all well and good knowing about all this stuff, but how do we put it all together for maximum impact?!

So, if this is the kind of thing that really interests you, then check back in a months time for the first installment, alternatively just drop me a line and let me know you’re interested and I’ll make sure I get back to you when the article has been written.

I felt moved to write something about a fantastic client of ours – we have just launched a website for the Winchester BID – a largely unsung hero of Winchester Business, whose principle aim is to make Winchester a great place to come for the benefit of local business.

Winchester Bid is comprised, principally, of a hardworking team of 4, Keith, Amy, Ges and Emma who are quietly responsible for a wide variety of high profile activities around Winchester.

Perhaps the most obvious of these are the Winchester christmas lights. Now at first glance, this may appear like a simple task but there are a legion of logistical and administrative nightmares that accompanies the process, all of which we, the Winchester general public fail to appreciate. Other schemes run by Winchester BID include

• Chewing gum removal – you may have seen them all around Winchester city recently, apparrantly there have been TENS OF THOUSANDS of chewing gum pieces removed from around city centre alone.
• Diverted Giving – there are lots of boxes around Winchester where you can give to the homeless without encouraging street begging.
• Police Community Support Officers – Winchester BID are  sponsoring a number of PCSO’s and providing equipment such as head camera’s to protect Winchester retailers.

Quite honestly, the list just goes on and on, yet most Winchester people that I know have no idea of the work that’s carried out on their behalf.

So, if you have a minute take a look at the Winchester BID website, and if you have any way to offer support, moral or practical – just get in touch!

This is the fourth article in the Supercharge Your Website series. Most of us have written something about what we do at some point in our careers. This may have been in the form of a brochure, fact sheet or even in an email or letter to a client. It shouldn’t be a great deal of work to put this into an article format of around 400 to 1000 words.

The reason behind this is that there are numerous sites on the internet that offer free articles for people post on their site. The only stipulations are that they are not allowed to remove the credit, remove the link to your website or change the article in any way. By submitting an article you will generate a significant volume of links to your site (remember a link from another site is considered by Google to be a recommendation) as well as immediately becoming a ‘published author’ which could help potential clients view you a leader in your industry.

There are 2 ways to get your site published, you can use automated software to submit your site, there are many of these available. One of these is Article Submitter which can be found here:- http://articlesubmitter.imwishlist.com/. If you want the ‘Platinum’ edition, feel free otherwise just bypass all the heavy american marketing and get the free one (which is absolutely sufficient for most peoples needs).

The other way to get your article published is to type the words “free articles” in to Google. This will produce the main article sites. Just go into these and follow the on-screen instructions.

NB Don’t think for a minute that your industry or specialism is too boring to be published – if you’re in doubt just take a look at some of the stuff on the free article sites!

Once your article has been submitted you will find that the internet will soon be awash with your article! Well maybe that’s a bit optimistic, but you should certainly have some more links back to your site than you had before.

This is the third post in the Supercharge Your Website series which is focussed on increasing traffic to your website. I’m still a little surprised at how many people still aren’t putting their contact details at the foot of their emails. For those that do, many of us have our web addresses subtly placed at the foot of our address – why not use this as an advertising opportunity and turn it into a ‘call to action’? Here’s one from one of my favorite clients:-

We have just launched a wonderful new website – www.icon-interiors.co.uk – do take a look at the Emporium section for our new range of bespoke furniture.

Far more compelling than a simple link.