Your website launch was a hit! Your potential customers loved it. They engaged and also a part of them purchased your products/services. Awesome, right?
Now, fast forward to 4-5 months later. Does your website have the same number of visitors and engagements? You’re lucky if you answered yes! If your number of visitors are falling down, that’s because your audience is bored. And they want something new/latest to come back to.
Say, you open an Instagram account for your business and put up an introductory post. You’ve got a lot of likes and comments. But what after that? Do you disappear because you’ve got enough? Or stay on and keep posting something new to engage with your audience? The latter, you stay on, post and engage consistently to keep your followers hooked.
Same way, your website needs to be updated regularly. It’s to tell your visitors that your website is up-to-date. Your website needs to tell your potential customers that your business is flourishing. And that you are ready for business with them. Nobody wants to see a 3 year old outdated news article or an old blog post on the top that is not even relevant to your audience today.
During your website’s launch, you would have mentioned that you have been in business for 5 years. And that you know the market inside out because of so and so. A year later, we’re sure your business has grown and is wiser than when you were 5 years old. You may have won a couple of awards or opened a new branch in the city. You might have introduced new products/services or left behind some of them.
Will your one year old website tell your potential customers all of this? No. That’s why you must take out a little time every now and then to keep your website and your customers updated.
Your website needs to be active to delight your visitors. But your website also needs to please one more thing with its activity—Search Engine Optimization or SEO.
Search engines will not show websites in the search results that are inactive. Search engines need proof that you are actively adding value to your visitors. If your website is active and updated regularly, the search engines give you a higher ranking. There are more chances for your website to appear at the top of the search results page.
Read more about it: How to Slow-dance With Your Website’s SEO For Success
Building your website is not a one-time project. It is ongoing and you must learn to keep pace with it in the digital world.
Honestly, it is not that difficult. There are easy ways to keep your website active. All you have to do is block time from your calendar to follow them.
Ways to Keep Your Website Active #1 – Blogs
Blogs are by far the easiest way to keep your website alive and going. Websites with a blog have 434% more indexed pages. (Indexed page means the search engines have visited, analyzed and added it to their results database)
Work closely with a content writer and feed them with information like—what your customers are confused about, what your potential customers like reading, what your customers should know before buying/hiring you, how your customers can use your product/service to their benefit… Oh the list is long.
What we’re trying to say is that you will never run out of blog ideas. There will always be something new to tell your customers.
You blogs will perform well if it ticks one or both of these boxes:
- Informative
- Relatable
57% of marketers say they’ve gained customers specifically through blogging. Posting new blogs actively on your website will not only keep your website alive but will also build your credibility as a trusted source for your audience.
Ways to Keep Your Website Active #2 – News, PRs, Milestones
Celebrate your milestones with your customers. Did you get featured in a media article? Link it to your website. Adding backlinks to these articles works great for your website’s SEO as well.
Did you win an award in your business circle? Write a PR thanking your awardees. Are you expanding your business to a new city? Your website must know!
The good thing is that you can categorize all this kind of information into a Features or a Press Release webpage on your website.
You can also add information about brands you’ve collaborated with, projects you’ve worked on/working on and give regular updates. You can showcase your interviews and publications. This webpage will keep your website active as well as showcase social proof for your business.
Having this information collated together on your website may also make room for more journalists/articles to feature and interview you in the future.
Ways to Keep Your Website Active #3 – Gallery
Having images, videos and visuals on your website is important to appeal to your potential customers. Nobody likes just a block of boring text. Your content has to be paired with stunning visual elements. And these visuals, just like your content, must be updated regularly.
When you’re a product or service company, you will have plenty of pictures. You can use the best of them on your website’s gallery.
If you’re a construction company and just finished a project, you can add them to your existing gallery. If you’re a product company working on developing a new product, you can upload behind-the-scenes photos.
New branch? Renovated the old one? Too many walk-ins in your store today? Did something funny/interesting happen in your office? Celebrated an employee’s birthday? All of them deserve to be cherished with photographs. And the photos can go up on a dedicated Gallery section on your website.
Ways to Keep Your Website Active #4 – Hero Banner
If you’ve launched a new product, it can go in your PR/features webpage and also on the front page of your website. In the hero banner which is the first thing your visitors see when they open your website.
Though, you’ve put the entire information in the PR/blogs/gallery, give a sneak peek of it on your homepage. Because not always will your potential customers find their way into the PR/blogs/gallery webpage. You need to tell them to go there. You can do this by adding a button with an interesting headline on your homepage.
You can showcase your Best Selling Product of the Month or your Most Loved Blog of the Quarter. Joined social media? Tell your visitors that you can now find them on social media. You can also include testimonials, new launches and upcoming initiatives.
If you’ve helped 300+ families relocate in a particular month with your packing and moving business, you can add it as a milestone on your hero banner section. Numbers always attract.
The trick is to update the hero banner with relevant information for your potential customers. This will re-engage your second-time website visitors too. You don’t have to put in a lot of work. If you have something share-worthy, create a poster with an image and a compelling headline. Upload it to your homepage and done.
Don’t let your website just sit on the Internet. Keep it active and constantly pull in new customers through it as your business grows. From updating testimonials to creating blogs, there are many things you can do with your website.
Having an updated website will contribute to your digital presence and boost your business potential. Which one are going to start with to keep your website alive? We’d love to hear it in the comments.
