Keeping it Fresh

Keeping your web site fresh

• Increases credibility
• Engages visitors' interest
• Maintains visitors' enthusiasm
• Maintains search rankings
• Helps keep you one step ahead of your competition

How to keep it fresh:

• If you have any external links (to other sites), check for broken links at least once a week.
  
  
• If you have any message boards or forums on your web site, check them at least daily or more frequently. Delegate someone to do this for you if necessary.
  
  
• Be sure to remove or update old news and announcements regularly.
  
  
• Remove old or expired specials and sales postings. Vary your sales or specials frequently, offering different percent discounts or specific amounts for different periods of time.
  
  
• Emphasize or promote different products or services as "Featured Products". Holidays are a great time to do this.
  
  
• Always answer promptly all correspondence related to your web site.
  
  
• Use web site statistics as a tool.
  • Which pages are people visiting most frequently?
  • Which keyword or phrase searches are bringing people to your web site?
  • Which pages are people exiting from?
  • How many return visitors and new visitors are you getting?
  • How long do people spend at your site, and on what pages?
  
  Do these fit with your goals and objectives? If not, can you use this information to capture a new target market or change your approach?
  
  
• Resubmit to search engines on a regular basis. Make small updates to web pages so that search engines detect newer files and index your content higher because it's newer.
  
  
• Use a paid inclusion program to automatically re-crawl your web site for search engines so that new content is automatically updated in the listings. With such a service, your site is automatically checked for updates and indexed in the search engines approximately every 48 to 72 hours. Caveat: Even the less expensive of these can get expensive. Overture's Site Match for instance charges $49.00 to sign up for a year, PLUS $.15 for every click from the search engines to your site. That means if you have 1000 clicks from the engines to your site, you pay $150.00 in click fees alone.
  
  
• Spend at least one hour every week looking up high-ranking but non-competing relevant web sites. Send a brief, friendly email requesting they post your web site link on their site. Offer to feature their link at your web site in return. This is called "reciprocal linking". The more high-ranking sites which carry your web site link, the higher your site will rank in the search engines due to higher link popularity. Be careful who you link to, however. See "What's With Those Search Engines?" for more information.
  
  
• Advertise, Market, Promote! and keep doing it on a regular basis. Say for instance you sell widgets and you think widgets would make a great gift. Would the average person think of even looking for widgets to give as gifts if they didn't see or hear it suggested in an ad? Maybe, but why not make it the more likely choice?
  
  OK, so now say someone is advertising gift-widgets, prompting a potential customer to go online searching for widgets. Whose web site are they likely to visit first? The unknown, never-heard-of widget dealer, or the name they recognize? People tend to trust names they recognize more than unknowns.
  
  Studies such as one by Harris Interactive show that brand awareness is a key factor in driving shopping habits. This is known as name-branding, and is one big reason for advertising, marketing, and promotion. Keep your name and positive image in the public eye and they will tend to think of you first when they consider your product. Lapse in your promotion efforts, and you'll be yesterday's news.