The new year always invokes thoughts of a fresh start and a sense of positivity and hopefulness. Why shouldn’t your website share those same sentiments? Getting your website ready for the New Year is a great way to get your site for the upcoming year of succcess.
Here are some helpful tips to for getting your website ready for the New Year:
Refresh Old Content
Did you know that refreshing or updating old content is great for SEO? If you didn’t now you do. When you update old blog posts or web pages Google interprets those changes as new content from your site and Google loves new content. Go back into your old blog posts and look for opportunities to link other posts or pages from your site.
Don’t Forget the Copyright Year in Your Footer
It amazes me how many people forget to update the copyright year in their footer. It’s probably one of the most over looked things to update and it’s probably the easiest one to update. It will take you no more than a minute to change 2020 to 2021 even if it felt like it took us years to get to 2021 from 2020. Thanks Coronavirus!
Update your Themes and Plugins
If you’re using WordPress for your website, updating your theme and plugins is helpful when getting your website ready to tackle the upcoming year. Having everything up to date also helps with protecting your site from being vulnerable for attacks. And not to mention with everything up to date it also ensure that your website will continue to run smoothly.
Add to your Portfolio
If you had some amazing projects this year that you’re super proud of why not add them to your website for all to see? Showing prospective clients and customers your latest work is a great selling point for them to hire you and your services or to buy your products.
Backup Your Site
What if, God forbid, Y2k actually hits in 2021 instead of 2000? Ok, so that won’t probably happen but after 2020 stranger things have happened. Now is a good time to backup your website in cases there is some catastrophic event that wipes out your website completely.
Double Check Your Contact Info and Social Media Links
Change is inevitable and maybe this year you changed your email or social media handle. Make sure that you updated your website to reflect those changes. No one likes clicking to a Instagram account that is no longer there because you changed your name.
Check Under the Hood
Your website is a well oiled machine and sometimes those machines need a check up. Check for broken links, pages that throw 500 errors and for any other technical issue that may help slow down your website. Like refreshing your old content helps your SEO efforts having broken links and 500 errors will hurt you.