Who was president when your site was last updated?

This past month, I was meeting with one of the leading advertising / web design firms in SLO County. (Which will remain nameless for reasons to be made obvious.) The owner of the firm admitted that their own firm’s website had not been changed in a long time. (That owner is not alone – I know of at least one other web design firm that has had the same job posting live on their site for the at least the past four months.)

In a nutshell, it was “everybody’s” job to update the site, which meant – in effect – that it was NOBODY’S job to maintain the site.

Does this sound like your company or organization? I saw it all the time when I was webmaster for the SLO County Visitors & Conference Bureau. Restaurants with outdated seasonal menus. Hotels that had emailed special offers, but didn’t post them on their site. Event organizers that didn’t even list their own upcoming events. Etc. Etc.

Google looks at about 200 factors in rating websites. Frequent website maintenance is a MAJOR factor in raising a site’s score.

Is your organization’s website still referring to websites / events / restaurants / staff / that have changed their name / gone out of business/ changed locations / changed dates etc etc.?

Ask yourself – who was president of the USA when your site was last updated? Why hasn’t it been done?

Old and outdated info from lack of website maintenance does not make “The Google” happy, and does a disservice to visitors / clients/ staff etc. What impression does a visitor to your site receive when it has obviously not been updated in a long time? The short answer – not good. This will negatively impact sales, which is why you have a website in the first case.