All gardeners know this: A lot of work goes into every blooming garden on your doorstep. If you want to enjoy healthy, flowering plants, you need to look after your garden regularly. You need to rake leaves, tidy up, move plants, etc. It's very similar with website maintenance - that's why we call ourselves the website gardeners! For your website to flourish as a valuable marketing tool, it needs regular maintenance.
But what is the best way to go about website maintenance? What factors need to be considered?
In our current series, we show you the areas in which regular maintenance is necessary and how you can turn your website back into a flourishing garden in small steps. In our "Website maintenance" series, we start with the "Content" area.
Topicality is rewarded - by your readers (and then also by Google)
Regular website maintenance ensures that the first impression of your homepage inspires website visitors. This is the only way to ensure that visitors become loyal customers.
And at the same time you influence your Google ranking. This is because search engines immediately notice if customers bounce quickly when they click on your site. And a high bounce rate is bad for your Google ranking. A negative spiral!
To avoid this, one thing is particularly important - firstly: up-to-date and secondly: interesting content!
Why is up-to-date content important for website maintenance?
Why you should provide up-to-date content is almost self-explanatory: unless you are maintaining an archive, nobody wants to access a website where the pictures from the 2016 company party appear in the "News from our company" section.
I've often heard the argument here: "Yes, but that just means that we have a lot of work and can't take care of our website. Our product XY speaks in our favour". All I can say to that is: your website exists primarily for your visitors. How do you feel when you walk into a restaurant where nobody greets you and the tables are dusty? Do you then also think "Oh, they must go to a lot of trouble in the kitchen, the food must be fantastic!"? Doesn't it also make you feel disrespected? You should definitely avoid this negative feeling for your website visitors.
Internet visitors today have so much choice of websites that meet their expectations. They will simply go elsewhere - to competitors who invest in regular website maintenance. However, the negative image that your website has stolen your time remains.
Tip: If you recognise yourself in the above paragraph, why not take the first step and turn "News" into a timeless category, e.g. "Blog" or "Internal". Then you won't have the stress of keeping up with content.
I just want to be number 1 on Google so that people see me. Why should my content be interesting?
A typical mistake made by many company websites is that they "over-optimise" their pages. We call this "inhumane SEO". Why?
Try it out for yourself. Enter a slightly more complex term or a question on a topic that interests you and for which you need more information into Google.
Now at least ten pages appear that deal with this topic, but in a completely superficial way, with zero information content for you and obviously they have all copied from each other. You immediately notice that these pages have been perfectly optimised by agencies, but they have become completely irrelevant for the interested website visitor.
Tip: Read your latest blog articles and pages out loud and put yourself in the shoes of an impatient website visitor. Are you satisfied with your content?
If not, write about a topic that really interests you. Forget about factors such as keyword research or search engine optimisation for the time being. Instead, keep the following guiding principle in mind when maintaining your website:
The Internet is for people and not for machines!
What good is a website that ranks number one but bores your visitors? Of course, "marketeers" will tell you something about the importance of visibility, but you can ask yourself: what is more successful for you? If you appear a few places further down but reach your target group or if you are at the top but so superficial that nobody stays on your pages for long?
If your site captivates visitors because you provide interesting, well-researched and prepared topics, then you will be number one for your target group.
Without any manipulation, because Google also wants people to use Google in the end. After all, they pay for the adverts. The same applies to Microsoft's Bing, of course.
But how do I find new, interesting topics?
Tips for interesting content:
- Only write about topics that interest you personally. Only then will you be motivated and go into detail. Anything else is a waste of time, both for you and for your visitors.
- Stay curious and question everything, especially when you hear from third parties: "But that's the way it's done." These phrases are the perfect start for a new blog article.
- Subscribe to newsletters that interest you and are related to your website. Which topics are covered? Are you missing anything? Or are there topics that you could use as a template for another topic?
- Many people say: "What can I write about us, we're boring". For you, everyday life in your company may no longer be anything special. For your website visitors, it's a completely different story. Take a look around the YouTube platform to see how many subscribers some channels have that tell stories about supposedly "dry" topics such as law or tax returns and how excitingly they are told. Study how these stories are told and let yourself be inspired.
- Start by speaking a story into your dictation machine or tell it to a colleague or friend and record it. With automatic transcription tools, you will already have a wonderful text template. (And that would be another interesting blog article in its own right 😉 )
- Divide large topics into several blog posts and you'll have enough food for at least a month. The article on website maintenance that you are currently reading is divided into the blog posts "Content", "Security", "Technology" and "Tidying up" as a mini-series.
- Ask ChatGPT about topics relating to website maintenance. But be careful: only use ChatGPT as a template provider, scrutinise the answers and never simply copy them 1:1.
