In his book Atomic Habits, the author James Clear proposes the benefits of tiny, incremental changes for significant long-term results. While the concept itself isn’t new, Clear’s comprehensive and approachable system for achieving personal change is proving popular, with more than a million copies of the book sold and counting.

While we can see intellectually that small changes can (and indeed often must) be the constituents of large ones, many of us still have a contradictory and paralysing sense that only big-bang approaches are worthwhile. It’s an unhelpful illusion, and nowhere is this more relevant than your website.

Your first “big bang”

To some degree, it’s understandable that change feels like a big hill to climb when you have gone through launching your own website. 

Going from zero to a visible public presence is a big step, and one that is often highly overwrought and over-thought. The pressure for perfectionism is high: it is your public storefront as a business, and naturally you want it to reflect everything positive about your offering.

However, once it is launched, the last thing you can and should do is sit back and rest on its laurels. Tempting as it may be, it is actually desirable and indeed necessary to keep updates small and regular.

Continuous improvement is still key

Contrary to the big-bang illusion, a web environment offers you the perfect chance to correct mistakes, refresh your keywords and test the effectiveness of different combinations. 

More importantly, fresh content also has the following benefits:

• Maintaining your relevance (and click-through rate)

If you search a term on Google, you’ll find that the top results are usually published in the past year. Content that was relevant when you wrote it won’t always be perceived that way; for instance, you are much more likely to click on information published in 2019 than in 2014.  Your customers are no different. 

If your competitor’s website has newer content, they are likely to get more traffic (and business), which feeds again in turn to their SEO advantage. Don’t be the static source of information in your field. 

• Frequent indexing 

Search engines use web crawlers to index your website on different algorithmic factors. Whenever you update your site, search engines take notice and adjust your ranking. If your website shows no new content, others with fresher content may surpass you. It’s also well known that Google favours fresh content; recently published content gets higher rankings, especially by topic. 

• Increasing your authority 

The more quality content you write on a topic, the stronger an authority you can become. When readers start trusting you, the search engines will respond accordingly. Updating your pages regularly will increase your presence and authority in your industry.

Start today, with 1%

If you’re feeling behind, the first rule is, don’t panic. The easiest way to get started is to make small tweaks to existing content; pick low-hanging fruit, like fixing any small errors you’ve noticed, tweaking your ‘About Us’ page to cover recent achievements, and updating your contact details with social media links if applicable.

From there, you will no doubt start to see possibilities for growing your content naturally. You can also offer reciprocal guest posts for complementary businesses, which also improves your search engine rankings. 

Whatever you do, do it a little at a time; it’s not just easier to manage, it is in fact essential. And if your current SEO provider isn’t doing this, ask them why.

Need help with finding your sweet spot in content maintenance?  Ark Advance are experts – contact us today.