Keeping it Fresh

Brands and logos can be static for years to build recognition, but eventually an upgrade is indicated. Often this upgrade isn’t so much a change in appearance, but an update in functionality. Regular maintenance is the key, so that your brand is identified as being consistent and high quality.

~ Continually update your your keyword list. Take a hard look at your keyword performance on a yearly basis; cut irrelevant terms and add in new terms. Wordtracker and Google AdWords tools can be used to expand your current keyword phrases and obtain information on relevance and search volume. High traffic terms should be incorporated into the top level pages of your website for maximum exposure.

~ Don’t ignore stale or outdated content on the net – it’s unattractive to users and search engines. When writing new content, support proper keyword phrase density with the appropriate word count, and include the primary keyword phrase around once per hundred words. Including the phrase in your URL and meta data are can also strengthen your pages relevancy for search. After you update your keyword list, follow through with these checkups.

~ Crawl your site to see what Google sees. Depending on how big your website is and how often you update or add content, removing old pages and adding new ones to your sitemap file can be a pain. Perform a monthly site crawl and add important or top-level pages on your website to your sitemap Remove pages with broken links or that are no longer relevant. After updating the sitemap file on your site, submit an XML sitemap file to the search engines.

~ Fix broken links; these can negatively affect your brand by causing a poor user experience. Use proper redirects that point to functional pages, and take old pages off the site completely. Schedule regular website maintenance monthly to fix broken links and ensure that you have a strong 404 page in place to bring users back into the website if they encounter a broken link.

~ Analyze traffic regularly. Examined metrics such as top entry pages, time spent on the site, or bounce rate in addition to plain traffic numbers Look for patterns or anomalies in your analytics data. Change, tweak and test to come up with the best approach.

As this year draws to an end, make a resolution to keep your site clean and running smoothly!