Is Updating My Website Really Such a Big Priority? Why?
Updating your website is important, and we tend to think about its importance in two distinct ways:
The technical aspect and the content aspect. Both are critical in having a secure, relevant, and well-performing website.
First, let’s cover the technical aspect.
Technical updates — like your website plugins — are important for a lot of the structural integrity of your website.
Keeping plugins up to date makes your site more secure, and ensures that it’s performing more smoothly and efficiently.
Typically, people who are interested in hacking or compromising a website are looking for vulnerabilities to exploit. Outdated plugins are a common avenue for this type of exploitation.
Plugin developers are frequently updating these tools in order to protect users from these security loopholes, making it all the more necessary to update them. These simple updates protect users and site owners from harm.
But these plugins aren’t solely updated for security purposes, they’re also updated to help improve a site’s functionality. Most sites are using a variety of plugins, and it’s essential to keep these tools up to date so that the different technologies on your website remain compatible.
That outdated plugin might not play nice with the new plugin you added to your site, and it’s very common to see some functionality loss or have the site “break” altogether.
In that sense, updating your site isn’t a “nice thing to do when you get around to it,” it’s a critical operational function of the business. An operable site is a profitable site.
Don’t Forget Your Purpose: Updating Your Website’s Content
And where keeping things updated on the technical side of things is important to the functionality of your website, updating the content of your website is extremely important to the purpose of your website.
Is it accurately representing your business? Does it accurately represent the goals of your business?
As things change for your business — if your hours are changing or if the members on your team change — you’ll want to keep that information accurate, just so that it matches with the experience of your business, so you’re being represented accurately online.
This is huge in terms of building credibility with your audience and your customers.
Additionally, regular content updates on your website is a great way to help support Search Engine Optimization.
Freshness of content, so to speak, is an aspect of your website that search engines are reviewing, particularly for topics where timeliness is a factor.
Similarly, for different sorts businesses, there might be seasonal changes, and keeping your website updated gives visitors and search engines signals that your your business is keeping up to date with the state of the industry, with the state of people’s lives, and also just lets people know that you’re engaged online, and that the website is a good place to connect with your business.
SEO and GEO — Updating Your Website for Artificial Intelligence Search
And it’s not just traditional SEO that we’re talking about. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) AI tools, like ChatGPT, are audience-wise, and function similarly to search engines. They’re scraping websites for information, and then using that information to create the content that the user of the AI tool sees.
Where it differs from your traditional search engine approach is based on how the content is structured.
These interfaces tend to be more conversational in tone and often focus more on longer tail, full sentence queries.
Content publishers these days need to be cognizant of traditional, keyword-focused strategies while also considering newer, conversationally-focused techniques that appeal to generative search.
And, of course, let’s not forget the content’s relevance to the end user, to the person who is reading it. Is it up to date? Is it relevant to their needs?
It’s one thing to be found in search, but it’s altogether more important to be useful once found.
What We’re Looking for When We Recommend Website Updates
If we’re kind of doing an audit or examination of a website to look for improvement opportunities, the main places where we’ll start is with organic traffic trends and Search Console trends.
These trends are pretty indicative of how you are or are not reaching potential new audience members. The insights are where we can start to compare success vs. areas of opportunity, because we can cross reference the actual website trends vs. the business’s goals.
A good example of this is if a B2B client is seeing a lot of search queries that are more relevant to a B2C audience. That tells us that the content needs revising so that it’s more relevant to the intended B2B audience.
Updating your website, from technical and content perspectives, should really be a core business goal for organizations. It’s always worth taking a look at your content to make sure that it supports your goals and how you want to achieve them.
It might be something as simple but as vital as your calls to action. Or double-checking your plugins to make sure that what you’ve set to “auto-update” is actually, you know, automatically updating.
You’ll often find that some are fully on the latest version, while others haven’t been updated in a very long time. This can cause conflicts in unexpected ways that can be easily avoided with the right partner and support system.
Keep Your Website Up To Date So That It’s Growing Your Business
Your website is not a set it and forget it entity. It’s a core part of your marketing strategy, and a key part of your business’ growth.
Keeping your website updated is critical to maintaining its functionality, usability, relevance, and security. Regularly updating tools, like plugins, will protect your website from vulnerabilities while also supporting its performance.
And keeping its content up to date will help traditional and artificial intelligence powered search tools find and evaluate the quality of your content, while giving people the relevant information they need to find your business.
Choose a partner that can help you better understand your website’s role in growing your business, one that can handle the technical and content-related updates, share relevant data, and recommend improvements that will support your goals.
Formada specializes in website updates. We have the team, talent, and expertise to help you grow. Contact us today to learn more.