We’ve been thinking about the trend toward “just one word” instead of New Year’s resolutions. Your website could benefit from positive changes next year, and we’ve already offered a couple of possible words: alignment and capture.
Here’s another choice for your website’s “just one word” for 2016:
lively
The first way to think about having a livelier website next year is the simplest and most powerful: update your website regularly.
A WordPress website makes this easy, but all websites can be updated one way or another. Having current information about your business online is obviously important. When redesigning websites, we’ve often been told that we can just use all the information from the current website — and then, when the client makes a final check, we discover that the address of the business, the team members, or the list of services offered needs to be updated. There are probably frustrated customers out there when this happens.
But updating your website frequently also encourages search engines to crawl your website more often. Think of a spider web with the spider relaxing in the center. An update to your website is like a fly landing in the web. It causes a little tug on the silken thread, and the spider goes to see what’s up.
An unchanging website doesn’t need to be crawled.
Blogging is the most effective way to create a steady stream of new content for your website. It’s the single most valuable thing you can do for your website’s SEO, and we have seen that regular blogging leads to quick indexing of new posts and pages at a website. You’re essentially telling search engines, “We have new stuff over here all the time! Drop by often.”
Let’s get less literal now. Actual new stuff going on at your website is key, but there are also real benefits to lively language at your website. Boring your readers is hardly ever the goal of a website. Even if your business brand or industry requires a serious, upscale tone, choosing active language, compelling stories, and vivid vocabulary makes your website more enjoyable for your visitors.
Choosing “lively” as your website’s one word for the coming year can give you a framework for your website strategy: if a new tactic doesn’t liven up the website, don’t do it.
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