Taking the time to review and audit your website content is a job worth doing and will ensure that your website continues to feel fresh, relevant and up-to-date. It may be that you see the content on your website all the time, in which case, you have probably stopped seeing it in the way that a first time visitor to your site would. Or perhaps, you don't look at your website very often at all - in which case, the case for an audit is just as compelling!
Landing Pages
Start by looking at your main landing pages. This may be your home page or a specific landing page set up for social media referrals, email or online advertising. Is the page text accurate and up to date, do you need to update your images, is the content on-message, are you using the right keywords for optimising the page? Do you have a 'latest news' or 'coming soon' item on the page which is old or expired? You should also check to make sure that any links are working and you have clear call-to-action points. For more information on landing pages, see our blog 'What makes a landing page which converts'.
Main site content
Move on to the other pages on your site where the information is likely to be more static. Candidates for bad information are areas like contact us pages, staff bios, FAQ pages and resources pages. FAQs and resources can be extremely helpful to site visitors, but only if they are up to date. If you have out of date or misleading information on these pages, it can make your company appear as though it is sloppy and lacks attention to detail - not a good look... Make sure that both internal and external links are working, product information is accurate and current and that contact and staff information is correct.
Blogs
Blog content. Cast a critical eye over your blog to make sure that it is serving your site visitors well. Remember, the idea of your blog is to inform, engage and entertain your website visitors. A good website blog will attract site visitors through its keyword optimised content, answers questions and helps to build trust in your company by demonstrating your knowledge and expertise. This is the case whatever your business does. An out of date blog is not impressive. If your last blog post was more than a couple of months ago, it is time to write something new. If you struggle to find the time for updating your blog, it really is worth considering outsourcing this to a specialist content creator, have a look at this blog post for more information. Whilst you are reviewing your blog content, check the perfomance of individual posts in terms of site traffic and SEO. If you have any posts which are perfoming well, try to take a lesson on why this is the case and apply it to existing posts which are perhaps not perfoming so well, as well as new posts which you write.
Downloads
If you have any downloadable resources on your website, check to make sure that they are working correctly and that the downloads themselves reflect your current product range and message. Again, anything which is out of date or inaccurate gives a bad impression of your company.
Like having regular health check-ups or dentist appointments, your website will benefit from a regular 'once over' to ensure that it's performing well and is representing your company correctly and in the best light possible.