The Importance of Keeping Your Website Up To Date

Why It Is Important to Keep Your Website Up to Date

Getting your site off the ground can involve a lot of work. Once it is live, you might feel tempted to kick back for a while, to “set and forget.”

But it is important to maintain your site and update it periodically. Doing so can greatly enhance its value to visitors and to you. Let’s go over a few reasons why.

1. Improve your site’s SEO value and rank higher in search results.

Search engines love fresh, relevant content. While evergreen content can also rank well, you should be regularly adding new content to your site that targets search strings your ideal site visitor is typing into search engines. Doing so can help boost your rankings, traffic, and conversions.

2. Make sure that your site’s security remains ironclad.

Technology is always moving forward, and so are hackers and viruses. That means that you also need to be moving forward, patching exploits as they appear. Doing so is essential both to protect your website and your visitors.

3. Maintain and improve site functionality.

If it has been a while since you updated your site, it may not be running as smoothly, quickly, or securely as it could be.

Programming languages, libraries, servers and vendor services all are upgraded periodically. If you do not also update your site framework, you will not be making the most of these improvements. Your site also could become buggy.

4. Keep your design fresh.

Remember what the web looked like ten years ago? What about twenty years ago? What about back in the 90s?

Sometimes we stumble across sites that look 5, 10, or even 20 or more years out of date.

When we do, the experience can be jarring, and we may even find ourselves laughing. We wonder, “Why does this site look so ancient? Is the owner of this site stuck in a time warp?”

When you update your site, you can also upgrade its design to fit with modern expectations. Doing so tells visitors you are up-to-date on current trends and care about their user experience.

5. Keep up with legal requirements.

Sometimes, for legal reasons, you need to update your site. For example, there might be a change in the law in your country or region that requires you to post a notification or ask permission regarding cookies or some other privacy issue.

6. Show visitors to your site you are present, involved, up-to-date, and authoritative.

Finally, one more reason it is important to update your site regularly is to make a strong impression on visitors.

How do you feel when you visit a site that hasn’t been updated in years? The message it sends is that the owner either doesn’t care or isn’t present. When you view such a site, you may click right out.

Contrast that with the sense of confidence you experience when you visit another site that includes fresh content within the past month, week, or even day. You know that individual or business is on top of what is going on in their industry and will be there to answer your questions.

Need Help Updating Your Site? Check out our plans!

Now you know a few reasons an up-to-date website is essential for security, SEO, technical functionality and customer experience.

Maintaining your site can feel like a full-time job, but Support Shield makes it easy, freeing up your time and allowing you to focus on running your business. We can handle nightly backups, ongoing content updates, and more. Choose a package now and start harnessing the full potential of your website.