How to keep your website active

Generating content can seem like a daunting prospect to add to your business tasks, but it doesn’t have to be. There are lots of easy ways to keep your website active – many are things you are already doing and can translate well into website updates.

SEO that gets you near the top of the phrases you want to be found for is still very high on the wish list of most small businesses. One of the ways of helping improve (and then maintain) your search ranking is by updating your website regularly.

The main “fallback” to keeping a website up to date is by running a blog, discussing topics relevant to your business. But not everyone loves writing opinion pieces or informative articles – or has a business where this is relevant. The thing is: it doesn’t need to be a blog.

The first thing we always recommend to clients is consider what you currently write in your updates on social media. Usually, you will find a heap of ideas there without even realising – and they are things you are already writing about, so adding them to your website becomes just an operational task, rather than a creative (or draining) one. To simplify it, you could do a weekly feature or review on your website, highlighting one special update each week.

Depending on the type of business you have, the types of updates will vary. The key is that it must be text on a page, not in an image or file (like a PDF).

Some examples of easy things to update on your website include:

  • If you are a retail or product-based business, adding new products to your website (with descriptions and pricing).
  • If you are a sports or gym/exercise business, adding timetables (set up on a webpage, not as a PDF attachment).
  • If you run classes, workshops or events – adding a calendar with your upcoming activities.
  • If you are a hospitality business, add your menus into your website as text (and keep them up to date).
  • If you are a service business, set up a section to feature your recent projects.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but hopefully will spark some ideas for easy-to-manage content on your own website.

We acknowledge the Bunurong/Boon Wurrung people, the traditional custodians of the land on which we live, work and play. We pay respect to their elders, past and present.