Grow Your Website Content

The Importance of Updating Your Website

Keeping your website up-to-date is crucial for its success, and it’s not so different from gardening. Just like how gardening requires regular watering and tending to your plants, your website needs to be updated with fresh content to achieve website growth through content marketing.

The phrase “content is king” is frequently used in the context of websites, and for a good reason. The quality of your website’s content determines how well it will rank in search engines and how much engagement it will receive from visitors.

Outdated Content Can Negatively Affect Your Website’s SEO

Visitors are unlikely to stick around on your website if the content is outdated. Furthermore, outdated content is detrimental to your website’s search engine optimization (SEO). User experience is an important aspect in gaining repeat customers. Google is continually improving its algorithms to identify websites with high-quality content. With its “helpful content update,” Google evaluates the number of low-quality pages on your website. If the overall quality of your website’s content is inadequate, all pages may end up ranking lower.

A key advantage for new pages is that they can be optimized for search engines. New pages that are specific to a given topic or subject can rank for those terms. It’s a win-win for your website since you are now providing more information to your readers as well as providing additional search terms that are relevant to your niche.

Create Content That Engages Visitors

The “Everything You Need To Know” titles and comparison articles generate the most organic traffic on average. Developing content that answers and informs your audience is a great way to attract more visitors who are looking for information from your website. Content is about reaching audiences you wouldn’t normally reach and creating opportunities for them to convert.

If content is organic, it attracts website visitors or social media engagement without sponsorship or advertising.

What Qualifies as Good Content?

First and foremost, think about your visitors. What are they looking for, and how can you provide that information in an easy-to-find manner? Consider the issues they are trying to address. High-quality content includes information that your audience is seeking. If you offer services, make sure that you provide comprehensive, valuable information about all of your services.

Your website can serve as a current and ever-evolving information resource as new services are added or expanded. The objective is to add new information or share your expertise on your website regularly.

Benefits of Keeping Your Website Updated with Fresh Content

Improved search engine ranking: Search engines such as Google prioritize websites with new and relevant content. Regularly adding new content to your website can help it rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). Google regularly indexes your site. When new information is found, Google adjusts it’s search engine protocols to visit your more frequently for new information.
Increased website traffic: Regularly updating your website with new and relevant content, attracts more visitors to your site. People are more likely to visit your site if they know that they can find informative content.
Improved user engagement: New content keeps your existing visitors engaged and interested in your site. Share information that is new or changing in your industry. Providing valuable and relevant information, keeps your visitors coming back.
Establishing authority: Publishing new content on a regular basis helps to establish your brand or business as an authority in your industry. By providing insightful and informative content, you can build trust with your audience and position yourself as an expert in your field. Your website is the perfect platform to showcase your knowledge within your market.
Keeping up with trends: Regularly updating your website with new content can help you stay current with industry trends and changes. This can help you stay competitive and relevant in your field. It’s amazing how many websites are never updated after they are launched.

Strategies for Adding New Content to Your Website.

To sum up, keeping your website up-to-date with fresh content is critical for its success. It is analogous to gardening; just as plants need regular watering and care to thrive, your website needs regular updates and new content to maintain its relevance and appeal to visitors.

Ensure that your website ranks well in search engine results and attracts more visitors. It is analogous to gardening; just as plants need regular watering and care to thrive, your website needs regular updates and new content to maintain its relevance and appeal to visitors.

Remember, while that one article might not convert, publishing consistently has a lot of value and potential impact on the bottom line.

Contact Pig Art Graphics today to learn more about our content creation services and how we can grow your website.

WordPress Security

WordPress security is immensely important for every website owner. It’s common for website security to be overlooked or neglected until you get hacked. If you have a WordPress website, then you need to take action to improve yourWordPress security.

A hacked WordPress site will cause serious damage to your business in terms of cost and reputation. The time and cost alone is very high. Once your site is hacked, Google will blacklist your site to inform visitors that the site is unsafe to visit. Your hosting provider will require that the site is cleaned before allowing the site to be activated.

Just like a natural disaster, cleaning and repairing website files from malware is a huge pain. Fortunately there are lots of resources to help with security ahead of time.

As a website owner, there are steps to improve your WordPress security:

Update WordPress Core, Plugins and Themes

WordPress has frequent minor updates to its software. Less frequently there are major updates to its core files. It’s a good practice to log into your site to make sure you are using the latest resigns of WordPress. In addition, the plugins and themes on your site have updates that are released by third party developers.

According to Sucuri, 4.3% of WordPress websites that were scanned with SiteCheck (a popular website security scanner) in 2021 had been hacked (infected). That’s around 1 in every 25 websites.

Malware is the most common type of WordPress hack. Malwar refers to any kind of malicious software used by cyber criminals to harm your WordPress website. The most common type of malware is PHP malware that gets inserted into your site.

Check out this site for more scary stats: https://colorlib.com/wp/wordpress-hacking-statistics/

Make sure that your WordPress core, plugins, and themes are always up to date.

Use Secure WP-Admin Login Credentials

The most common WordPress hacking attempts use stolen passwords. You can make that difficult by using stronger passwords that are unique for your website. Not just for WordPress admin area, but also for FTP accounts, database, WordPress hosting account, and your professional email address.

There are plenty of attacks that specifically target the WordPress admin area, including brute force attacks. These involve a hacker bombarding your login page with common password and username combinations in the hope of finding a match.

WordPress is particularly vulnerable to brute force attacks, as by default both the WordPress admin username and login URL are the same for every installation. If you’re using these defaults, then an attacker only needs to guess your password.

Using the WordPress default, your website’s login page is public knowledge. If you’re using the standard /wp-login.php URL and the default admin username, then a hacker already has two of the three pieces of information needed to access your admin area.

Create a custom login URL using a plugin such as WPS Hide Login. Once it’s installed, select Settings > WPS Hide Login from your dashboard menu. You can then enter a new URL into the Login URL field.

Save your changes and your WordPress admin area will now be accessible only via this new URL. Even if a hacker has your username and password, they’ll be unable to reach your login screen.

Use Trusted WordPress Themes

Build your website with a secure WordPress theme. I use themes which have constant support like theme updates which reduces potential conflicts with your plugins. I have personally used the Genesis framework and child themes from Studio Press. I have used Genesis themes for hundreds of websites.

Another trusted source for themes is the WordPress’ official Theme Directory, It is a great source for free themes, and it only lists those that pass through a strict review process.

There is also a plugin called The Theme Check that allows you to take any of your installed themes and test them to see if they meet WordPress’ official review standards. A passing score doesn’t necessarily mean your theme is perfect, but it is an indicator of solid coding practices.

To perform a check, you’ll first need to install and activate the plugin. Then you’ll be able to access a new Theme Check tab on your dashboard, under Appearance. There, you can pick the theme you want to test and simply hit a button to let the plugin do its work.

Install a SSL Certificate

SSL Certificates are required in order to have your site marked as a trusted site. Without the SSL certificate in place your site will marked as “unsafe”. As you can imagine this is not a great way to present yourself to the public. SSL certificates add a layer of security for customers who visit your site by adding encryption to the traffic between your server and the customer. a great way to increase the value of your company, by adding an extra layer of security to your customers and boosting the website’s SEO. It is especially important to have HTTPS since Google announced that it would affect companies search engine rankings.

SSL stands for secure socket layer. Your domain is now a secure a secure connection between the customer and the web server. This allows websites to transmit private data online. Website that are secure will end with an S, making it an HTTPS instead of HTTP..

Encryption is the biggest benefit of owning an SSL. The extra layer of encryption shows your visitors that your website is safe for them to submit their credit card number and other personal data. Your visitor’s data will now be transmitted over an encrypted connection to the site.

The SSL certificate checks that the information it receives is coming from the expected domain. So when your customer sends personal or private information, the certificate guarantees it is being sent to the secure site, and not to a potentially malicious one.

Remove Unused Plugins

WordPress plugins are one of the primary benefits with a WordPress website. Plugins add functionality to your site. On the downside adding multiple plugins adds weight and also slows down the load time. Many website owners have plugins on their site which are no longer needed but are still there on the backend.. By uninstalling those plugins you no longer use, you can ensure that your website doesn’t accumulate files and data you don’t need.

Even after you’ve uninstalled a plugin, there may be data left behind in your database tables. These can cause issues related to database bloat and security if you don’t remove them from your site.

Closing

WordPress websites are like cars. You do need to check in on your WordPress sites to make them as secure as possible. The information here is a brief best-practices article. There are additional steps that can also improve your website security:

More Resources: The Definitive Guide To WordPress Security

Make Sure Google Sees You

Use Google Search Console. Today.

There is one website task that I consider to be the most important task when a website is launched. Make sure that Google is indexing your site as soon as possible. Indexing is the process where the google bot is crawling your website and adding your website content to its search database.

Eventually, the search engines will get around to crawling your site but you can speed up the process with Google Search Console.

Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor your website’s presence in Google Search results. Search Console helps you understand and improve how Google sees your site.

Adding Your Site to Google Search Console:

Sign into your Google account. Make sure you’re using your business (not personal) account if it’s a business website.
Go to Google Webmaster Tools.
Click “Add a property.”
Choose “Website” from the drop-down menu and enter the URL of your site. Make sure you’re using the exact URL that appears in the browser bar.
Click “Continue.”
Pick a way to verify you own your website (HTML file upload, domain name provider, HTML tag, GA tracking code, or GTM container snippet).

Upload Your Website Sitemap to Google Search Console

After adding your “property” to GSC, upload a sitemap file from your website to the sitemap section of Search Console. A success message is displayed after the sitemap has been succesfully uploaded. A sitemap is an xml file that lists all the pages on your website. It instructs search engines in determining which pages to include in their index. Having a sitemap is an important part of search engine optimization. Sitemaps help Google discover your pages faster and more effectively.

There are various plugins available to create a sitemap file from your website. that can be uploaded.

Adding New Pages to Google Search Console

If you have just finished a new page on your website, you can request that Google adds the new page to its search query.

How Google Search works with your content

Crawling: Google downloads text, images, and videos from pages it found on the internet with automated programs called crawlers.
Indexing: Google analyzes the text, images, and video files on the page, and stores the information in the Google index, which is a large database.
Serving search results: When a user searches on Google, Google returns information that’s relevant to the user’s query.

Final Thoughts

You’ve worked hard on your website. Make sure that Google knows about it with Google Search Console.

Adding Value to a Website

The goal is to add value when adding new content.

I’m often asked to update websites on behalf of my client. As their web developer it is easy to carryout the task that is asked and leave it at that. But as their developer I am also acting as their digital marketer as well. So when a task is being performed during an update I can see what their real intent is. I know what they are trying to achieve and I can look at the broader picture which is, of course, the success of their website and the information contained on it. I often push back on a task and advise my client that the goal behind the task can be enhanced.

Two recent examples come to mind. They both involved the addition of a graphic file supplied by the client to be added to their respective websites. In the first example an auto repair shop wanted an industry-wide certification badge added to the website.

When I googled the badge in question I discovered it was a highly regarded badge recognized by the industry as a shop that had achieved a high degree of training to earn the right to display the badge. I suggested to the client that the industry badge deserved it’s own page on the website. The new page provided a space to explain what the badge meant and customers could now understand how valuable the badge was to that business. In addition, the new page provided an opportunity to expand the content and gain more opportunities for relevant keyword ranking for the website. The takeaway was that instead of adding a image to their website I could expand that opportunity and provide more value to the website.

The second example also involved expanding an opportunity for my client’s website. This client had a graphic file to advertise an upcoming Women’s Retreat. In this instance, I described what the Women’s Retreat was about and then linked to a PDF page which explained in detail everything that the Rereat would cover as well as the event payment details.

It’s hard to quantify what is valuable. I look at what the client is asking for and understanding what the desired goal is. I think websites are not clear in explaining the information contained on the site. The users of the site should understand all of the information and any terms on the web page. Explaining things in detail also creates more keyword-rich text and that helps the site as well.

This is one of my favorite ways that I love helping clients and help them see a bigger picture with their websites. Everyone is rushed these days and it’s important to be a second set of eyes for my clients and act in their best interests when working on their websites. Love that part.

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