Too many entrepreneurs expect their website to be perfect before they launch it. This causes them to second guess their decisions or wait a long time before they unveil their website.
If you go in with the expectation of perfection, you’ll always be disappointed with your website’s performance. Think of your website as a work in progress. How can you optimize your website over time?
I’m not advocating for you to update your website every few weeks. That would be exhausting! Instead, I recommend optimizing your website every six months to a year.
Guided by your website strategy, you’ll make strategic updates to your website that will:
- Increase organic traffic through SEO and keywords
- Decrease your bounce rate so more visitors stay on your site
- Attract the right kinds of leads through your website
- Clarify the benefits of investing in your services or products
- Improve the effectiveness of your website content
You don’t need to have everything figured out to confidently launch your site—especially not all at once. Let’s cover some of the elements you may want to consider optimizing and how often to update them.
5 recurring ways to optimize your website over the years
Who wouldn’t want to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their website? If you have a “set it and forget it” mentality with your website, you may miss out on opportunities for better lead generation and conversion.
Just like Rome, a high-performing website won’t be built in a day. Give yourself time to make the best decisions for your brand and reflect them on your site. There’s no rush to get it all right the first time!
When you’re ready to review your website, you’ll always want to go in with a plan. If you aren’t sure where to start, I’ll give you an outline to guide you through the process. Let’s go!
Update your messaging
Cadence: Every three months
It’s important to continually refine your website messaging. The more you market your business through social media, email marketing, and beyond, the more you’ll understand your target audience.
Once you get inside the mind of your ideal client, you’ll gain insights into what is important to them, how they relate to your brand, and how you can add more value to your offers. You’ll be able to collect this information over time and evolve your messaging as you go.
If you want to incorporate new messaging based on the insights you’ve gathered, you don’t need to completely overhaul your content. Instead, review your content to see what’s working and what could be improved.
To get started, you may want to:
- Test new headline variations to see if they result in more conversions with Hotjar
- Use different call-to-action (CTA) button copy to determine which gets the most clicks
- Add new team member bios and information to your About page
- Update any new titles or information in your professional bio
- Check for broken links, add new links, and check for grammatical errors again
- Update or swap out your website navigation with new links
Update your SEO performance
Cadence: Every three months
I strongly recommend setting your website up for success by incorporating SEO basics into your website from day one. I teach this through my course Simple Showit SEO if you’re looking for guidance.
If you haven’t really thought about SEO and what it entails, start here:
- Do keyword research and select one target keyword per page
- Incorporate your keyword into the page content without keyword stuffing
- Add a page title and meta description that describes each page
- Include alt text to all of your images and photos throughout your website
- Update your blog regularly with keyword-rich blog posts
There are so many other factors that go into creating a website that Google will love, but the most important thing is to ensure you’re offering valuable content.
Are visitors encouraged to spend time on your website? Do they resonate with your messaging and know where to go next? Are they excited to work with you and learn more from you?
All of these questions will help you get at the heart of SEO: optimizing your site in a way that prioritizes the user’s experience. Since SEO is a long-term growth strategy, it’s best to take it a little bit at a time so you don’t feel burned out.
Keep watching your analytics over the next few months (and years) to see how far you’ve come with directing more organic traffic to your site through SEO tweaks.
Update your offers
Cadence: Every three to six months
Have you recently made changes to the deliverables you include in your packages? Has your pricing increased since you launched your site? Have you shifted the timeline of your services?
If you answered yes to any of the questions above, you need to update your offers on any related sales pages or Service pages. It’s natural for your offers and packages to evolve over time, so it’s smart to update these pages as you go.
You want leads who are coming from your website to get access to the most updated information. That way, you don’t have to explain changes during your sales calls.
You can also list which months you’re currently booking for like I did with my Showit Template Customization service below. This makes your content look fresh and answers frequently asked questions upfront.
Update your portfolio
Cadence: Every six to twelve months
There’s no need to update your portfolio every few weeks with your latest work. Instead, I recommend choosing your best work and highlighting it on your website’s portfolio page.
Also, it’s a good idea to show off the kinds of work you’d like to do more of. If you’re a wedding photographer who recently decided to narrow down your niche to include only elopements and intimate weddings, you won’t want to show photos of grand ballroom weddings you’ve shot in the past.
As you review your most recent work, consider if there’s anything you’d like to add or replace to your portfolio. Ideally, you’ll curate your portfolio over time to showcase your most stunning projects.
You may also want to add extended case studies, update your testimonials, and display impressive client results. This will make your portfolio even stronger! If you’ve been tempted to skip over your portfolio, I encourage you to take another look.
Update your design
Cadence: Every nine to twelve months
While a website’s design is crucial to its performance, you may not need to update your design as often as other items on this list. When working with a website designer or buying a template, you’ll already have a set of optimized page layouts and branding elements to work with.
However, if you need to add more photographs, videos, or other files to your website, this is a good time to do it. You can give your images a refresh with a new brand photoshoot or include a few illustrations or icons for more visual interest.
Your website design shouldn’t need an overhaul when you review it the first time, but if you feel it needs a refresh, decide what you’d like to keep and what needs improvement. This will help you make any necessary changes to your site without having to start completely from scratch.
Get ready to optimize your website
Now that you have a list of tasks, you’ll be able to easily update your website with instructions on what to do and how often you need to do it.
Start by putting this plan in your calendar so it doesn’t fall to the bottom of your to-do list. Your future website visitors will thank you for prioritizing their website experience!
Better yet, get a group of business friends together virtually or in your area to complete these tasks together. We love a good co-working session!
If reading this has you considering a full website redesign, let’s talk about your project and see if I’d be a good fit!
