If you run a business heading into 2022, you should already have a website. However, having one developed and launched is not the end of the work you need to do. A website is always a work in progress, and to get the most out of it, you need to keep it maintained regularly. However, over time what has been required to keep a website successful has evolved and changed. Here are some of the best ways to maintain a healthy website in 2022.
Fresh Content
Your website should never be stagnant. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which users will react negatively to your brand if your website is not updated. Even worse, they may think you are no longer in business and click away. Put up blog posts, advertising content, and images daily. Change up your banner images and keep things interesting. You want your audience to feel engaged by the look of your website and that they will read and consume something different every time they visit. You can put so much on your website, from sales updates to events to FAQs.
Search Engine Optimization
The final goal of any business is to get as many sales as possible. Your website plays a big part since it should be your hub for purchases, marketing, and blog content. Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to ensuring that your website finds itself at or near the top of search engine rankings. Updating regularly will go a long way towards this. However, you also must make sure that you are tagging photos, using keywords, and taking other steps to optimize your website. If you properly optimize your website, you will gain more traffic from organic search results and thus more sales from that traffic.
Use a Service
If you haven’t been maintaining your website regularly, you might find that you struggle to take the time to do it, no matter how valuable it is. It requires dedication and carving out time daily, and sometimes it might even be several hours. Many businesses hire website maintenance services to help, which makes sure that your website maintenance gets done and that experts do it. That way, you can be sure that your website is being properly maintained and updated without you having to lift a finger.
Check your links
A big part of your SEO efforts involves having a solid link portfolio. This means having authoritative websites that link to your page, and your content relates to other authoritative pages. However, sometimes links go dead as websites update their content. You don’t want visitors to your website to constantly click on links in your content only to be met with a page error. If you have links that connect to other pages on your website, you definitely want to make sure the linked content remains active. You can purchase web tools that will help you audit your links to ensure everything is working. If there are dead links, find other authoritative links that you can put in their place.
Check your page loading speed
There have never been more options for getting information and purchasing goods online. With so many options, you can’t afford to lose what visitors you get to your website. If you have pages that take too long to load, you could be losing thousands of possible sales as people click away rather than wait. Page loading and performance will frustrate your potential viewers and have them going to your competition. Every once in a while, check how fast your pages load as you go through the site. If you need to, resize or remove images altogether from slow pages to go back to their proper loading speeds.
Keep up with Updates
Never ignore the software updates that you get for your website software. There are a couple of reasons for this. For one, you want your website to operate as well as it can at all times. Updates to your core website software and your plugins will ensure that you are always running the most recent versions, which should operate better than their predecessors. On top of that, software updates are often for security purposes, and they install patches and other security measures that prevent cyberattacks from accessing your data. Cybercriminals are always coming up with new ways to attack websites, so you need those updates to stay ahead.
Your website should never be “set it and forget it.” It should be a work in progress that you are regularly updating. In 2022, you need to maintain your website to keep it healthy and contribute to your business’s growth.
