Nothing is more frustrating than when your website content is available for users to see, but no one can find it. Creating a user-friendly website will help you reach that goal. However, once you create your website, it is even more important to keep it updated with regular website maintenance. Here, we have compiled our top five tips to ensure that your owned content can be found easily by keeping your website updated and maintained.
1. Practice good SEO
Good SEO is vital to your website. Using keywords that match up with your content in the meta-description will aid search engines in finding your content and ranking it higher in organic searches. If you haven’t been doing this, take some time to go back through your site and tag each of them with the most important keywords found in your content. Once you have started this process, continue it with any new content you add to your site, especially your blog.
2. Post content regularly
Like most of the tips in this guide, content is something we find building an audience. Posting content on the same day each week will allow users to anticipate your post. Some people enjoy a good schedule, so when they know you are going to be posting, they will seek out your content. In addition to your audience reading your content more, search engines will also start to rank your website higher in search results because the consistent posting will send a signal to search engines letting them know your website is active and used often.
3. Use an SEO audit tool
This one goes hand-in-hand with practicing good SEO strategy. When you have started an SEO foundation, an SEO audit tool will push your SEO game further and make that foundation solid. While there are many different companies that offer SEO audit tools, Moz, Raventools, SEMrush, and Screaming Frog are some that provide the most bang for your buck. Some of these companies provide free versions, but you will find that a monthly subscription will give you the best options for creating and maintaining a strong website. These tools help provide keyword research so you know how strong the keywords you have chosen are. They also “crawl” your website to check for errors and broken links.
4. Update photos and videos
It is nice to showcase photos and videos on your website to give a good visual of what you are trying to accomplish. A good rule of thumb is to review and refresh those galleries once a year to give your site a fresh feeling. Not only will your site appear updated because there are new photos and videos, but it will also let your audience know that you are still doing what you do best and give some examples of your accomplishments.
5. Build up your backlinks
Using the above steps will help you in this final tip. Once your site is error-free, you are posting valuable content regularly, and your SEO foundation is solid, your backlink building will be much easier. So how does a backlink work? Backlinks are links from other sites that link back to your website and content. The more often backlinks are used, the higher your website will climb in search engine results. Using anchor text in your content will increase the chances of creating backlinks. Word of caution: be choosy about who you decide to link to in your anchor text. Choose credible sources and sites your company would be proud to be associated with. Not all websites are reputable and backlinks from them could ding your ranking or open a whole world of spammy, inappropriateness that you won’t want to deal with.
Building a strong website maintenance program will ensure that your audience can find and use your content without hindrance and you will start to see results right away.
Not sure where to start when creating content?
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