What you will find here: Why you would want to frequently update your business website, the value differences between Outsourcing and Doing It Yourself, and what you will need for both.
Ignore your website problems, and they will go away (and so will your customers). Many companies are still living with the concept that if their website looks good, is intuitive and functional, that it is good enough and will last them for another 3-5 years. This is no longer the case. Updating your website in today's world is critical to keeping your website investment working for you and bringing in business.
When we speak of business website updates, I am referring to updating the text, information and/or pictures not the layout or design. It has become essential that you develop a plan or strategy to keep adding new content on a regular basis...so initial question is, why?
Google, with over 70% of the market share in searches done world-wide, has recently made changes to how they view websites. They are now focusing on unique, fresh content and the overall user experience. This means the more new, interesting and relevant content you have, the higher you will appear naturally in searches. So how often should you update your business website content? “As often as possible” would be my response with one caveat ... you must have something worth talking about. So now that you have a strategy to update your website with new, interesting and worth-while business content, will you Do It Yourself (DIY), or will you Outsource to a web design and updating company?
It all comes down to your time, knowledge, and editorial skills.
The time to write a competent and compelling blog piece once a week or so
The knowledge to make content relevant to what is going on with your company
The understanding of what your customers are looking for and what they consider valuable
The editorial skills not to make spelling or grammatical mistakes
The technical know-how in SEO to enhance your standings
Either a CMS in your website, or the technical understanding to update the code
Done in house with the right people, it is cost effective (ifthey can complete it quickly) and bolstering to your SEO efforts. Done wrong, it is worse than having nothing at all. Google isn't nice to bad content.
Takes far less of your time and with a good online marketing partner can be extremely effective. They should have:
Competent writers either on staff or on the bench for strong content, blogs and ad copy
The capacity to learn your company and create relevant/timely content
An understanding of your customer base through your responses and through theirs
A technical knowledge of SEO both on page and off to enhance your standings
Clear, technical knowledge to quickly (within 48 hours normally) update your site
Do an audit of your existing content. Check your analytics (or have your guru's do it for you) and look for under-performing pages to update and/or remove them.
Strategize a realistic and sustainable plan to add new content regularly, not in bulk
Try to add content that is both useful and has terms your potential customers are using
Add links to new content from the homepage, email marketing, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube
If you have a website that is indexed by Google, getting the traffic you need, and still bringing in leads you should make sure most of you investment of time and budget goes to content. If you have the time and know-how, then DIY...but remember that time=$$$ and in most cases it is faster and more economical in the long run to outsource to a professional website company.