Generating Fresh Content
There are many reasons to keep adding new or fresh content to
your website. In most businesses and organizations, things
change. It may be that the day-to-day activities of your
organization interest your clients. Maybe potential clients can
gain information from your site, leading to an appreciation for
you over your competitors. Or maybe you just want to keep your
site updated so it will rank well in the results of search
engines.
Whatever the reason, we'll talk about a few different areas of
your site that can be kept updated.
Portfolio
If your work results in distinct creations (ie paintings, logos,
websites) rather than identical items or services (t-shirts,
toys), it would benefit you to keep a portfolio. Show pictures
of your work, from multiple angles if your work lends itself to
that sort of thing.
And keep it updated! At T&S Web Design, we do our best to update
our portfolio each time we complete a project. If the client
allows it, that is.
It may be that your clients want your work for them kept
confidential. Even then, they may not mind if you just list them
as one of your clients. If they're a big name client, the name
alone may be enough to entice others.
Of course, even if you sell items or services that are all
identical, you can still get client feedback. You can ask
clients specifically for feedback, or you might just pull it out
of emails clients have sent you. Just make sure you have the
client's permission to use what they sent you.
Calendar
It may be that you make appearances or have some sort of list of
appointments that all clients would benefit from knowing. This
would be true for a public speaker like Scott Ginsberg and for a
charity with distribution dates like UR Special. If it's true
for your company as well, then you need to keep an up-to-date
calendar on your website.
Blog
Currently one of the more popular methods for communicating on a
regular basis with a large group of people online, a blog can be
a very effective way to keep your site updated. If you are
reading this article online at www.GetASiteOnline.com, then you
are reading it on a blog.
A blog can be a number of things. It can be a periodic
newsletter, where you keep people up to date on day-to-day
happenings. It can be a series of articles. It can even be a
series of simple news updates.
FAQ
Many websites start their life with a Frequently Asked Questions
page. All too often, this page is never really updated. If you
ever get new questions, it is likely that they will be asked
more than once. Add the questions to your FAQ page.
At the very least, keeping a FAQ page up to date can cut down on
you having to answer questions multiple times. After all, that
was probably part of its original purpose. That, and it will
make it easier for visitors to your site to find out answers to
specific questions.
Pictures
If you have a section of your site that is dedicated to
pictures, you should definitely keep it updated. But even if you
don't, you should periodically update the pictures throughout
your site. After all, if people go to your site and see new
pictures, they are that much more likely to re-examine the rest
of the site.
Keeping your website up-to-date with new information can be
time-consuming, but if you are updating it while keeping your
current and potential clients/customers in mind, it is well
worth the time.