Consequences of Neglecting Your Website

Often, business owners invest in a website and leave it dormant. When you leave your website dormant, the following things happen:

1. You are not able to target new terms. This results in fewer new keyword rankings and small or no traffic.
2. You do not create new pages that can be linked to. This causes you not to earn valuable links.
3. You are not capturing new visitors. Therefore, you will not add to your re-marketing audiences, email list, and push notification list.
4. Your website lacks content that can be used to create hub pages. Hub pages are master pages that link to other pages on the topic. These often rank very well.
5. You lack fresh content that will be shared on social media. Therefore, you get little to no social media shares and traffic.
6. People don’t get encouraged to return to your website. This is because there aren’t new posts or content to look at. This reduces your branded searches, which are an indicator of quality to Google.
7. Overall, if you leave your website dormant, it says to Google that your website is not active. Your website dies a slow death.

1. If you don’t correct technical issues

If you have some web experience, you understand things break down on a website from time to time. If technical aspects of your site are not monitored, the following could happen:

1. Your website will miss out on important technical updates. If you use a Content Management System (CMS) such as Drupal or WordPress, you will want to ensure that your site is keeping up with software patches and security updates.
2. Your corporate image is affected. A poorly maintained website with lots of errors, broken links, dead pages, and outdated information projects a sloppy corporate image and can cause business to decline over time.

You can read more about website maintenance here.

When you don’t monitor technical issues and fix them consistently, they start to add up. Think of it like a car – it needs regular maintenance, or it will not take you anywhere.

It is important to stay technically correct. If you don’t, you will get an error that will cost you down the line. Your website will become out of date that, you can no longer compete in the market.

2. If you don’t refresh pages

When you refresh a page correctly, traffic will increase to that page by 12% to 33%. Sometimes even more.

The reason? Google sees your new text and images. New text and images improve value; Google ranks your page higher.

There are several ways to do refreshes. Some of those include:

1. Adding FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) section to the page
2. Updating facts on the topic
3. Adding links to other articles
4. Adding schema. They improve the way search engines read and represent your page in SERPs.
5. Making the text longer. By doing more research and adding more information on the topic
6. Changing the page template. To improve aesthetics on the page. For example, using a different font or font size

The important thing to look for when refreshing a page is whether it matches search intent.

3. If you don’t create new pages

Your website should be targeting new terms and organizing by segment. Segments should be prioritized based on business goals and tracked.

If you don’t build new pages, you will not build keyword growth momentum. New pages are excellent landing pages, for paid search and paid media, in general.

As your website grows, create landing pages that target specific keywords and audiences. This will improve the quality score and conversion rates all around. People who win in the future of the web, are the ones converting traffic for less.  

4. If you don’t look out for bad or broken links

Spam links have become numerous than ever before.

When you watch your back links, you will notice the following:

1. People scrape your website content and keep the links in by accident.
2. You get Google alerts from sites hacked by malware.
3. Competitors try to do negative SEO on your site.

5. If you don’t update your disavow file once a month

You are putting your website rankings at risk. We do it weekly for clients in competitive spaces.

6. If you don’t watch out for stolen content

Go to your top landing page on your website right now. Copy a paragraph. Put that text in quotes and search for it in Google.

What do you see? Some of you will see other websites coming up for that content. Some might have stolen from your website.

If it happens across multiple pages on your site, it will have a big impact on your rankings. It can be devastating. Sometimes we find others have duplicated a website as a whole. Stolen key pages, or take a section of a page.

When this happens, you need to address it by either:

1. Rewriting your website content
2. Asking the other site owner to take down your copied content
3. Filing a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) action on the offending website. You will have to present evidence of the offense.
4. Sending them a cease and desist email.
5. Contacting their host provider. Ask them to remove the offending site. You will have to present evidence of the offense as well.

If you don’t watch out for your stolen content, it will have a negative effect on your business and rankings. This is something you need to address right away.

Conclusion

You already know the benefits of improved search ranking for your business. Create and update content. Solve technical issues you already know about. Comply with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). All of this will improve your bottom line. If all this is too technical or overwhelming for you, don’t worry. We can assist you to wake the sleeping giant that is your website. Fill out and submit the form below to get assistance.

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