March Madness: Basketball & Websites – Both Require Effort

As we near the end of the NCAA March Madness Basketball, I thought I would talk about the madness we all endure in life and why you need to schedule time for your website. Yes, I am a HUGE basketball fan; NBA, NCAA, CIS and my most favorite: watching my 18 year old son Zach on the hardwood. It takes so much discipline to be an athlete, they make it look effortless however so much time and effort is invested off of the court so we can enjoy the product. Countless hours of shooting, dribbling, strength and conditioning to ensure the quality of their play and performance at a high level. What would happen if one of these athletes sat on the couch between games and never practiced? Perhaps in the beginning they would perform ok, but as time went on their quality of play would diminish.
 
This same philosophy can and should be applied to your business website. Although you may be busy working in your business and may think you have a website that is doing its job. The fact is you should be constantly monitoring and changing your website content to keep it fresh. You may have had a quality website when it was launched but if you aren’t actively changing and managing it, it is becoming stale and stagnant and may not perform as it once did, and therefore not getting the same traffic.
 
Content needs to be updated and new content should be added on a regular basis (minimum once per week); this will in turn increase your SEO. Try to create a new blog post once per week or at the very least rewrite existing content or change product offering information. Following the changes, you should alert users on Social Media of these new items so potential customers can review it and search engines will return to your site. Driving search engines to your site on a regular basis will boost your rankings over time.
 
Always ensure your content is quality information relative to your business and remember although there’s madness in your life, unless you make time for your website you may experience a different type of madness if your rankings and customers drop.
 
In addition to keeping your website content up to date, an up to date platform is very important. No matter what type of website you have, WordPress, Joomla, HTML, etc. Your website should keep up with the latest trends in website technology so it performs as a quality site. Is your website “responsive” I.e. does it render well on a Smartphone or iPad? Does your website use Flash? How old is your website? Technology is constantly changing and your business offering should reflect that you take notice of the latest technology. Also, an out of date platform is a sure fire way to show you have neglected your site or even worse your site could be vulnerable to hackers. Keeping your website up to date shows you are invested in your business and care about your customers’ experience.
 
Should you need assistance with your website maintenance, whether it be content or structure, contact us, we’d be happy to help. SiLK can create an effortless maintenance plan for your business allowing your site to perform as well as a highly trained athlete.
 
Go Wisconsin Badgers and Go BIG Z!
 
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