A new survey points to a very real problem that affects website ROI significantly. The results are not surprising, but here's why not updating your website content can kill sales, bore customers and clobber your search engine rankings.
Streamline.net is a website hosting company in the U.K. Their Small Business Bytes Survey found that 2 out of 3 website owners had had a business website for 2 years or more, but only 10% of them made updates on a daily basis and only 1 in 4 made an update every month!
Search engines, particularly Google, make great efforts to supply their customers (those searching for information) with the very latest information and as a result, how often a website is updated affects the overall ranking. That's one reason why blogs and news sites tend to outperform other sites for certain keywords.
Google crawls some news sites continuously. It's not uncommon for a new story or blog post to get indexed within seconds. And how often their spiders visit your site depends on how often they find new content. If they return in a week and see that nothing has changed, they might not return for 10 days the next time. If they find nothing new then, it could be weeks before they return.
That's one good reason to update your content regularly.
Sites that aren't updated frequently are also a sign the owner/manager is not paying attention to feedback he or she is getting from visitors and customers. Successful websites constantly evolve based on factors such as split-testing of pages or individual page components, shopping cart abandonment, keyword research, customer feedback and about 6 dozen other things.
Sites that aren't updated often are boring!
The Small Business Bytes Survey also showed that 34% do not know how many visitors their site attracts or any of the other metrics that come with a decent analytics package. That's like a shop-keeper not keeping track of foot traffic.
Most website hosts include website analytics for free and there are free services like Google Analytics that can easily be added to a site. The information can be invaluable for decision making and you can read more about website metrics and analytics here.
Yes, it takes time and resources to update your website on any regular basis. Yes, it may take paying a consultant or coach to devise strategy and monitor the execution, design and develop your site, program functionality and/or execute marketing plans. And all that is part of calculating your website ROI.
But the ROI of a static website is usually zero, to say nothing of the potential not achieved.
Get an advantage over your competitors! Begin updating your site on a regular basis!
Click here for my post on website content ideas.
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Do you manage or own a website? How often do you update it? What obstacles do you face while maintaining your site?
How do you market your website? Do you know how many people visit your website, where they came from and what keywords might have been used to find you? Do you know which pages are most popular on your site? Do you know which pages, other than your Home page that people land on first? Do you know which page they visit last before they move on to another site? Have you ever considered that there might be a reason why they exit your site from certain pages?
I'd love to hear from you! Kurt @ WebAsylum.com or (630) 482-9323
I agree 100%. Fresh content really is very important for any website or blog.