Whether you run a small business, non-profit organization or e-commerce business, website content management can take up a lot of your time and effort – which is why most successful businesses leave it to the pros.

Why You Need Website Maintenance Services

Businesses are organic, living things that require mindful management to flourish and grow – and so do their websites. Outdated or incorrect information, long-past events, expired promotions and sales, old imagery and a lack of new, SEO-driven blog posts result in diminished traffic, higher bounce rates, lower sales and/or leads.

Often called web content managers, content management service providers help clients keep their sites fresh and relevant, and can implement effective SEO strategies to drive traffic and increase engagement.

Website Services for Small Businesses & Organizations

Small to mid-size businesses and non-profits typically cannot afford to hire an in-house content manager for website updates and everything that comes with maintaining a website. Often, this duty falls to one or more people on the team who have little to no experience with websites or online marketing and/or no real time to dedicate to keeping the site up-to-date.

Thankfully, this is why content management services exist. If your company doesn’t already have an in-house expert or if it doesn’t make sense (financially or otherwise) for your company to hire a dedicated in-house content manager, hiring outside professionals to do the work within your budget can save your company significant time, effort and resources. What’s more, the pros are fast and efficient at what they do – meaning you get more bang for your buck and updates are completed quickly and correctly.

How often should a business update its website content?

There is no one-size-fits-all to website management – what works for one company may not work for another. Your content management plan should be optimized to fit your business needs and goals. Some sites require daily updates and maintenance, while others may only need to be touched once or twice a month. There are, however, a few basics to website updates and website content management.

Implement Website Refresh Updates on Mobile & Desktop

First thing’s first: all website updates should be tested on both desktop and mobile. Nearly 50% of all internet usage in the U.S. is done on mobile devices, yet there are still tons of websites out there that are not mobile responsive. And many businesses with responsive websites rely on the common fallacy that if you have a responsive site, everything you do will magically work on mobile.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. What functions and looks good on a desktop won’t always work the same on mobile (and vice versa). That’s why it’s imperative to always make sure website updates are properly implemented with responsiveness in mind.

Content Updates

For many businesses, your website is your first – and maybe last – impression on potential customers, partners or investors. One of the fastest ways to look out of touch or incompetent as a business is to have outdated or incorrect information on your site. An outsourced website management service can help you avoid this faux pas by keeping your content relevant, error-free and – most importantly – up-to-date.

Event Management

For busy businesses and non-profits, keeping your event calendar up-to-date is vital to keeping your customers, partners, donors and/or volunteers engaged and informed. While there are tons of WordPress event calendar plugins that help make event calendar management easier and more streamlined, keeping the calendar current still takes time and effort.

Blog Management

One of the biggest missed opportunities for small and mid-size businesses is the ability to drive organic traffic (and sales) with an SEO-focused, well-written and properly-managed blog. Blogs are the organic funnel from Google and other search engines to your site. Smart editorial planning, in-depth SEO research and quality content can significantly drive traffic that would otherwise be organically directed to your competitors.

Image Optimization

Sourcing great images online is easier than ever before. One downside of this bounty? Some of these amazing images are HUGE in terms of file size. While a 4MB image is relatively nothing in terms of hard drive space, a website full of such images will slow to a crawl. Even with cookies, having unoptimized images on a web page can seriously affect load times – and bounce rates.

According to Google, bounce rates increase by 32% when a page’s load time goes from one to three seconds. Bounce rates increase by a whopping 90% when load time goes from one to five seconds. While page load times can be affected by a host of factors, unoptimized images are a major culprit for most sites.

Side note: optimizing images for SEO is a whole other post.

Ultimately, your website is only as useful as the time and energy you put into it. Outsourcing your website content management to a content management service is the best way to make the most of your investment.