Technology Marketing by Tatum MarketingJust another WordPress weblog

Another in a series of articles on Search Engine Optimization and Web Marketing in Plain English from Eric Gerds.

As we come to the end of 2008 it is important to look back not just on friends and family but to also review your website.

The first question to ask yourself is when was the last time that you totally reviewed your website?  If the answer is “never” or longer than six months ago, I suggest your first New Year’s Resolution should to setup a schedule to review your site at least four times a year.

Under this review, make sure all information on the site is up-to-date, especially contact information! Nothing can give a bad impression to someone looking at a site faster than outdated information.  Worse still is to have outdated prices, product details, or buying information.

Old newsletters, articles and blog-like comments can be moved off the main pages.  If they are over a year old, dated 2007 or earlier, these are the things that should be archived.  If information in them is important and popular then consider repackaging them in a “best of” article to give it a fresh new look, or just rewriting the information to make sure you don’t have dated language or outdated technical jargon.  If there is enough information then consider bundling it all together and offering it on your site as a free download. This could be very attractive addition to your 2009 website and an easy way to get more use out of the same content.

Also under this review, check all links and buttons to insure that they work.  This includes all internal links and any external links.  Nothing is more frustrating to people than to try to click on something and then nothing happens.

Be sure to click on ALL buttons from each page. This includes the master buttons that are part of the headers at the top of each page.  Do not assume that because it worked on the home page that it would work on every page.  Technically speaking while it looks like the same button on each page, it’s not actually the same button, which is why they all need to be checked.

Going beyond the basic function of the website, you also need to find out whether or not your website is backed up.  If it is backed up do you have a copy?  Is the copy updated regularly? Do you have the passwords to reinstall the backup?   All computer system should be backed up on a regular basis and this includes your website.  This backup should be safely stored, in your control and away from your other computers systems.

You don’t think that backups are important?

I was just at a party where a webmaster friend of mine describe the problem of his new customer.  This company had been using the same web firm for years.  They went to contact the web firm to make some changes and discovered that the people had gone out of business without bothering to inform their clients and left my friend’s customer, and others, high and dry.

Because the web firm controlled everything, the customer had no passwords to the website, no information on the coding or databases of the site and could not even move it to a new web server.  The customer trusted the web firm and now need to pay a new company to rebuild their site from the ground up.  A full backup, even without the passwords, would have quickly solved many of these issues.

So as a final task for yourself this year take a good look at your website and give it a review.  The three starting points listed above should get you started.