5 Ways To Keep Your Website Fresh

If you’re going to start and maintain a website, getting it right from the very beginning is an important part of the process. You don’t want to launch without all the kinks worked out, and you need the platform to accomplish most of what you want it to right away if it’s going to attract eyes and generate repeat visits.

With that said though, it’s also important to take an active role in keeping your website fresh once it’s established. Plenty of businesses and individuals alike launch great online platforms only to see them grow stale or fail to hold the interest of readers and/or customers.

Considering this, we wanted to take a look at some tips for how to keep a fresh site long after launch.

1 – Keep Working For Views

It’s likely that when you first launch your site, you’re doing all you can to generate page views: tapping into your network, sharing on social media, doing some fundamental SEO work, and so on. If this work succeeds though, and you get your early views to the point that you’re satisfied, don’t stop! You have to keep working actively to keep those views up because in most cases you can’t simply trust that your site will have continual appeal, or that it will snowball toward greater growth on its own.

Plus, priorities for SEO are always changing. Earlier this year, we wrote about how to improve your site’s ranking in 2020, and some of the tips in that piece can be helpful in guiding you in your ongoing work for more views. Whatever the specifics though, be sure to keep up the effort.

2 – Change Up The Visuals (Slightly)

Maybe the quickest way to convey to visitors that your site is being kept “fresh” is to change up the visuals now and then – if only slightly. A full revamp of your site’s look may be necessary at one point or another, but even minor changes can catch people’s eyes on an almost subconscious level, and keep the site interesting. It can be anything from a change in the background or accent colors to a new logo, too (if you really want to be subtle about it) a shift in the font for your written content.

3 – Set The Site Up For Updates

A lot of the suggestions we’re presenting here – adapting SEO practices, changing visuals, and even, as we’ll discuss below, posting fresh content – can involve going back and making changes to existing components of your site. Depending on the platform you’ve built your site on, this may be surprisingly difficult to do.

However, Updatable explains that modifications can be instantaneous if you’re set up with the right tools. Basically, there are services now that enable quick, instant changes to existing pages, allowing you to make updates without having to rebuild any significant portion of your site. Being set up to do this is vital to the overall effort of keeping things fresh.

4 – Always Post Fresh Content

It’s generally a given that you should post fresh content as frequently as you’re able to, because in some sense – usually – it’s what the site is all about. But beyond fulfilling a basic obligation, this kind of effort also helps to build better relationships with visitors. 

A piece at Medium discussed content updates in interesting terms, stating that “hot-off-the-press content frames a trustworthy relationship with your clients,” given that the content you produce is ultimately what your clients have confidence in. In other words, if you have site visitors, it’s because of your content in the first place. Providing more, in a timely fashion and up to the established standard of your site, is the best way to retain trust.

5 – Highlight What’s New

It’s a small touch, but our last suggestion is to highlight what’s new. That is to say, if you add a new section to your site, post new content, or add new items to your store (if in fact, you’re selling products), don’t hesitate to tag whatever it is with a little symbol representing something new. Not only will you draw eyes to your latest feature, but you’ll make it abundantly clear that the site is being updated actively, presenting the image of a functional, busy, and ultimately successful platform.