For the most part, security is one of the most important reasons why you need to update your website. Not to mention, you must keep content fresh to increase audience engagement.

Technology is continuously evolving as is the digital world. And with website design being in the same group, this also is evolving. These are just two reasons why you need to update your website regularly. Otherwise, you’ll miss the latest digital trends and risk becoming irrelevant.

With a professional web design agency like Envisager Studio, we can have awesome content ready when people visit your site. And there’s nothing better than having an affordable, professional service at your disposal. Not only do we create eye-catching content, but we know how to promote your brand effectively.

However, promoting your brand is more than just having your website built. Just like your car needs maintenance to continue providing you uninterrupted transportation, a website is no different.

As such, you must consistently work on important components such as website performance and SEO. Additionally, providing visitors with new content is another reason why you need to update your website often.

Why Update Your Website

Albeit website updates are necessary, there are decisions to be made before making changes to your site. Take caution when editing a live site, even when you know the reasons why you need to update your website.

Making drastic changes like altering your primary keywords should not be done without prior research.

Reasons To Update Your Website

1) Boost Website Traffic

Keeping your website up to date helps you build trust with new and existing customers. Regardless of the industry you’re in, customers will start to rely on your site for information they can trust.

Updating your website also help you build domain authority. Just look at Wikipedia, for example. When you perform a search query, 9 times out of 10, Wikipedia is the first result you see. But why is that? Well, it’s because its content is thoroughly researched and reviewed by their editors. As a result, people trust the site, thus building its domain authority. Moreover, you don’t get inundated by inessential ads while browsing the content.

Have you visited a website that their latest blog post was three years ago? Or the copyright date is super old? If you have, then you may wonder if that business still exist. Or if they are still operational, are they struggling?

See where I’m going here? Having outdated content gives the impression that your business isn’t doing well. It also makes your business seem outdated.

2) Ensure Compatibility

Whether your site is WordPress or different CMS, your plugins and other elements must be compatible with the core platform. Your website also needs to be compatible with the latest browser versions.

As you dive deeper into the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines changes, you will discover more reasons to update your website. In addition to these guidelines, there is also W3C international web standards that you should adhere to.

In essence, having an updated website allows you to handle these issues easier. Also, you will need to identify outdated elements that may cause your site to slow down. In general, the best place to look for such issues is in your website backend settings and plugins.

3) Enhance The Site’s Load Time

As mentioned in #2, one of the biggest reasons why you should update your website is load time. If your website loading speed has increased, you need to rectify that immediately. In the case, when the load speed increases, it means your site is taking longer to load.

These days, people are always on the go and using mobile devices. For this reason, they do not want to wait for your site to load. As a result, a slow loading website increases your bounce rate. Bounce is just what it sounds like. Visitors land on your site and immediately leave without taking any action.

Several factors contribute to your site’s load time. How a website is coded is one of them. This is why web development trends are geared towards improving a site’s load time. Therefore, website updates with innovative technologies help to reduce your site’s bounce rate. Not only that, but it also improve your Google ranking.

Other reasons why your website is slow includes:

• Large image or video file sizes
• Cluttered user interfaces
• Outdated website themes
• Lots of unoptimized or unnecessary links

4) Boost Your Search Ranking

Google’s bots are generally triggered to crawl through your web pages. Consequently, you should have updated content regularly to give them reasons to visit your site. In addition to improving your SEO rankings, it also make your content more visible to audiences.

Google’s search engine algorithms change almost every year. Thus, you need to update your site’s SEO settings. Keep in mind that some of Google’s changes are just a few iterations every few weeks. But other times, there are massive updates.

The bottom line is that most search engines usually rank updated websites higher.

Hazel Burgess

Hazel Burgess
FOUNDER/SEO DIRECTOR

Hazel is the Founder & SEO Director at Envisager Studio, a premier website design agency specializing in WordPress website design, development and internet marketing. In her spare time, she writes about search engine optimization, website design, and internet marketing.