We all love a shiny new website: you’ve spent months working with your web designer and copywriter to ensure that it reflects your brand and business, it is packed full of SEO so that it ranks high on Google and looks professional.  Despite that, many businesses just leave it there, once it is out in the world, it is forgotten and abandoned.  However, your website should be thought of as a living thing that needs to be tended and nurtured, and updated regularly.  But how?

What should you update on your website?

• Copyright date – ensure this is updated yearly
• Team members – add and remove staff as and when they join or leave
• Financial information – if you display pay rates (London Living Wage for example) make sure it is current. Likewise, if you show a list of charges for your products or services, ensure they are correct too
• Blogs – Keep these updated
• Review your website for broken links
• Plugins

How can Red Desk help you keep your website updated?

Red Desk offer various affordable services for the small business owner to ensure that their website is kept up-to-date:

• Website News and Blogs – we often find that this is the first area to slip when a website is launched. You may have written a few articles or had a copywriter do this for you to kick start your website.  You may have had best intentions to keep this up but your busy life gets in the way.  Red Desk offer a content writing service and we can also post any items that you have written too
• Plugins – Red Desk have just launched our website maintenance service. We can log into your website once a week, once every two weeks or once a month (depending on the complexity) to ensure that plugins are updated to the latest version.  If we spot something that hasn’t updated correctly, we will monitor this and find solutions when required.  Keeping plugins updated is the simplest way to ensure that your website stays secure and is performing at its best
• Website Audit – You should review your website every couple of months to check that the content is still relevant. We can refresh the wording on your website, change, add or remove images to reflect the current direction of the business

Other helpful articles

We have written other articles which you might find helpful in terms of keeping your website updated:

• Start up businesses – One of the main ways clients will find you is via your website. We work closely with website designers to ensure your website is up and running in a timely fashion We can also recommend graphic designers and manage your social media and SEO in-house.
• What to consider when launching a website – we’ve included a few other tips here including using social media to send readers to your website and also how to review the speed of the website
• Website Maintenance – we also offer add-on services like installing SSL certificates, domain transfer, transfer of ownership and liaising with your IT company

If you have a website support requirement, no matter how small or large,  get in touch with mel@reddesk.co.uk.