I just got back from the dealership where I dropped my car off for regular maintenance services. Oil change, tire rotation, brake inspection—you know, the standard stuff that every car needs every few months.
I have many automotive shops as blog clients, so I understand the importance of what they like to call “preventative maintenance.” I like to think of it as more of a proactive approach to car ownership. You can keep driving it until something goes horribly wrong and then you’re paying thousands of dollars to rebuild the engine or replace the transmission. Or, you can take care of the maintenance as recommended in order to help prevent major breakdowns.
Staying Proactive
I think the same approach is a good one to take when it comes to managing your website. You should be proactive with your site “maintenance.” For the purpose of this article, let’s talk specifically about content maintenance. I don’t want to delve into the technical stuff, though that’s just as important. You do want to keep your site up-to-date and running as smoothly as possible to prevent crashes, hacks and other bad technical issues.
When it comes to content management, however, it’s worth taking a proactive approach. I recommend scheduling time every 3-4 months (every 6 months at the least) to sit down and go through your entire website. Re-read all the content and make updates as needed. Perhaps something is woefully out-of-date or irrelevant, or you catch typos that were missed last time around. Maybe there is a product catalog or prices that need to be updated. You might have old videos, graphics or other imagery up that are low-quality and it’s time to remove or replace it. There’s always something that you can clean up to keep your website as sharp and relevant as possible.
Review and Update Everything
The same goes for going through your SEO tags, page titles, links and meta descriptions for each page. Take a look through everything. It helps you stay more familiar with all the content on your site and be a more savvy site owner.
Last but not least, take the time to rewrite some sections of content and add new content/pages as applicable. You’ll be amazed at how some fresh content added every few months will help your SEO and overall site traffic in conjunction with regular blog posts.
Time to Get Proactive
When is the last time you really looked over your entire website? If it’s been awhile, now is the ideal time for some good proactive maintenance. Then, you make that process a regular habit to go through it every few months (or delegate that duty to a team member or web services provider that you trust). You’ll have a much better website that will continue to stay up-to-date at all times.
NextGear Marketing will be happy to provide a full website review for free. And if you want, we can schedule regular content reviews and edits as needed. Or, if you want a business blog or to build a new website, we can help with any website content needs you have. Just call me at (714) 348-0642 or click this contact link.
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