Your website represents your small business online 24/7, 365 days a year. Small business owners often juggle many roles and website maintenance is an important task. Invest time in regularly reviewing your website and keep the content fresh and up to date for your audience. In addition to better serving your customers, adding and updating content will boost your website’s ranking on search engine results pages.
1. Review your site content.
Have you ever visited a website of a professional service provider and found headlines promising “bio coming soon” or “page under construction”? When that content is not updated in a timely manner, what message does it give to their visitors?
Review your site regularly to ensure that your content is up to date. Items to review include contact information, location and hours of operation. Does your site reflect current staff? Review your services, products, pricing and upcoming events. Update your business publications, case studies and testimonials as they become available.
2. Review your website’s privacy policy.
Your website needs to include a privacy policy page to disclose what information your business collects from site visitors and how it is protected. Does your website use cookies to improve the site functionality? Does your site collect shipping or billing information? Have third party plugins been installed on your website that collect visitor information? Are customers providing their email address to sign up for a newsletter?
There are many privacy policy generators that will walk you through your site’s unique functionality to comply with consumer privacy laws. If a significant part of your customer base is in another country, ensure that your website is compliant with that country’s privacy laws. Consider having an attorney review your privacy policy terms. Google ranks websites based on their trustworthiness. Having an up-to-date privacy policy can positively impact your Google ranking.
3. Review your site’s mobile experience.
Do you regularly choose to visit a website on desktop because the site’s mobile version is difficult to navigate? Readable text, ease of navigation and quick page loading time are important components of a mobile-friendly site. Check your site’s analytics to review what devices are being used to access your site. You may be surprised with how many visitors are using mobile devices versus viewing the site on a desktop computer. In addition to keeping users on your site longer, optimizing your site for mobile is a key ranking factor for the Google algorithm.
4. Review the implementation of your business branding.
It can be very confusing for your visitors if your website uses different fonts, colors, images, layout and messaging than your other marketing materials. Review your website to ensure that your business is presenting a consistent image across your digital and print marketing. The logo, fonts, color palette, images and messaging applied to your website should be consistent with your social media, emails, brochures and signs. If you have recently refreshed your branding, follow through with a roll out on your website for a cohesive customer experience.
5. Keep your website’s copyright date current.
Update your website’s copyright date each January to reflect the current year. Copyright your website content by adding a copyright statement to your site’s footer. It notifies visitors that you own the rights to the site content. Visitors cannot copy or use the content without permission.
5. Maintain a current SSL certificate.
When you visit a site that is not secure, the lock icon in the address bar will have a red slash through it and the URL will begin with “HTTP”. Not having an up-to-date SSL certificate alerts visitors that a website does not provide encrypted protection and authentication.
On sites with a SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate, the URL will start with “HTTPS”. HTTPS indicates that visitor data remains private and secure with encryption, preventing identity theft. Google ranks sites for trustworthiness and guaranteeing users a secure site experience. The Google Chrome browser flags websites without a current SSL certificate and downgrades their ranking.
6. Check your buttons and forms.
Test your buttons to confirm that they are linking correctly and not bringing up a “page not found” message. Review that each button’s call to action (CTA) messaging aligns with their current function and promotions. Test your forms to ensure that they are operating smoothly and refine them as needed to gather important information to improve your customer service.
8. Update your blog regularly.
Nothing says a website has been neglected quite like the date of the last blog post. One year? Two years? You have nothing new to share about your business or industry? Blog posts are one of the easiest ways to build out content on your website and gain more authority with Google. Carefully structure your blog posts using keywords that you want your website to rank for on search engine results pages.
9. Review your site image titles and alt text.
I can’t tell you how many times I have downloaded a logo from a website and found it is titled “logo1.png” instead of “your-business-name-logo.png”. Or a downloaded image titled “image1.jpg” that could have been titled “your-service-category-in-city-state.jpg”. Creating filenames with accurate descriptions can improve your site’s SEO and drive organic traffic to your website.
Adding alt text to your images makes them more accessible to visitors. Search engines also use alt text to identify the content of images, so it’s a great way to give your site an SEO boost. Use short, readable terms in real sentences that describe the image. Because alt text is used for assistive screen readers or browsers with images disabled, write a description that will be helpful for someone who can’t see it.
10. Review your content for spelling and grammar.
How many times have you hit the publish button only to realize that there is a typo in your shiny new content? Run your copy through spellcheck or consider including a colleague in the update review process to get another set of eyes on your content.
About the Author
Liz McCall is a graphic designer and brand developer for established businesses and startups. Liz is passionate about helping small business level up their print and digital branding and marketing. She has been building Squarespace websites for small businesses since 2015.