When you are creating or refreshing your new company website, it may be tempting to cut and paste from your old site or corporate brochures and sales literature. But there are a few good reasons why that is not a good idea in the current webscape.
Why you need fresh content
1. Your audience
If you are planning a new website, it might be because you have tweaked your business in some way or made some innovative changes to your product line. Imagine you are on a casting call as a performer — you wouldn’t just keep dragging out the same old headshot. You want your new self to be displayed on the new site and reflected in the brand and tone of voice — and that means new content.
2. Optimising your search position
Your search engine optimisation (SEO) counts on your site having meaningful content. That means a mix of longer high-quality content to engage your audience (blogs, feature articles, product descriptions) as well as all the things that search bots love: videos, photos, social media links, short useful content with headings, bullet points, tips and hints, with all the matching metadata in place behind the scenes. If you regularly post LinkedIn articles or YouTube clips, then you also need to consider the SEO recommendations for those platforms too.
3. Site speed
If search bots can read your site speedily without hurdles, your search ranking will be better. So, don’t risk old content putting mud puddles in the bots’ way — purpose-built content is the only way to streamline the running track.
4. Voice search
More members of your target audience are using voice activated search. To get the best results, your content should be in plain language and maximise those all-important key search terms. That takes a tiny bit of thinking time, and needs more than a simple cut and paste from existing copy.
5. Mobile responsive design
We are all searching sites on our mobile devices, and your content should suit a responsive website design.
6. EAT Google
You still see a lot of chat about Google’s preferred content in terms of the acronym EAT: Expertise; Authority; Trustworthiness. To make sure the search scanners perceive this from your site, you should make sure your blog posts list an author, any facts and figures are backed up with references, include biographies for any posts and guest content authors, make sure your site infrastructure is secure, monitor any content from your users or customer base, and boost your personal brand by telling your story online and backing that up with a suitable social media presence.
Starting your new website copy doesn’t have to be a chore – you can start by mapping your existing collection of content to a new sitemap. It can be a fun and visual exercise and a great way to involve your team members.
Get in touch if you want to swap ideas on your website refresh.