Updating your website is a critical piece to marketing your firm. Most prospects and potential employees go to your website to learn more about your firm and what you are all about. They want to learn about the people and the projects. The About Us or Team page is the most visited page of any website regardless of industry, because people want to know about the people they are going to work with. That’s why it’s imperative to have information about your leadership team and photos of each person. It’s also important to talk about company culture. Keeping your website updated will help market your firm to prospects and potential employees. There are five reasons to consistently update your website — we recommend once a month.
Showcase Your Current Project
Showing off your current work is important to catching the eye of prospects and potential employees. They want to see what you’ve recently worked on and what solutions you’ve provided to your clients. With the advancement of photography over the last five to ten years, you can definitely tell when project photography is older than 10 years. Updating your website with recently completed work allows you to portray the project types you work on, and also allows you to showcase new geographic markets or industries you are now serving. You should update your project portfolio at least once a month.
Recruit Talent
In the architecture, engineering, and construction industries, we are all vying for talent. It’s important to keep your Careers/Employment page up to date with current openings in your company. You must make it easy to learn about your company and positions available, while also giving instructions on how to apply and the entire process an applicant should expect. Don’t have any current openings? Then list the typical openings you may have and encourage people to check back regularly, or to submit their resume so you can keep it on file. You never want to turn away good talent in this marketplace. Most firms, upon finding a great employee, will find a position that fit that person’s skill set. Recruiting talent isn’t going to become any easier in the next twelve to twenty-four months, but keeping your website updated with current openings will allow potential employees to find these positions.
Enhance Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Google will troll your site on a periodic basis no matter what, but if you are consistently making updates, then it will troll it even more. The more often you update, the more Google will pull your information up in a search. Google will see your website as an expert in your industry. Your website must have content on it, though, in order for Google to find it. This is why content and copy are so important — and knowing what keywords your prospects and clients are searching for will help with your SEO, too. You can only jam so much information in your photography for Google to catch (meaning how you name your photos, which you should be doing as well).
Maintain Security
The internet is constantly changing, so it’s important to make sure your site is safe and secure. By updating plugins, installing an SSL Certificate, and maintaining your firewalls among other technical aspects, you’ll protect your website from being hacked and keep it in line with all of Google’s rules. (It’s important to follow Google’s rules, so you rank higher in searches.) Although you may not take credit card or payment information or store client data on your website, any website can still get hacked and may be down for days or even weeks. By consistently updating plugins and security measures, you’ll make sure your website is always up and running for prospects, clients, and potential employees to see.
Increase Traffic
If you are consistently updating your website with new content, then your existing clients, employees, suppliers, vendors, and industry partners will visit your website. It also goes back to search engine optimization (SEO), because the more consistent you are with updating it the more people will find your website, resulting in more traffic. Don’t believe me? Track your Google analytics for several months and then start consistently updating your website. You won’t see triple or quadruple traffic, but you will see a noticeable increase in traffic.
These five reasons to update your website consistently will help your firm and add to your marketing tactics. If updating your website seems daunting or overwhelming or you don’t have an in-house employee committed to doing it on a consistent basis (at least once a month), then you need to outsource this piece of your marketing. As part of nu marketing’s list of services, we are happy to help you maintain your website on a monthly basis. Contact us today for more information about this service.
