Your business looks different every day.
Your website should evolve over time, too.
That website of yours could be the first point of contact between your business and a spicy-hot lead.
We LOVE hot leads.
We HATE losing those leads when our website copy is lackluster, not specific, or just not giving what the reader was looking for.
So we’re all agreed: the words on your website matter.
Right?
Right.
So once you have that website copy dialed in (or at least at a level you can live with), how often should you fiddle with it?
If it’s working, should you mess with it at all?
It’s the ciiiircle of website copy, and it rules us aaalllll
Long story short: writing website copy isn’t a one-and-done task.
You tweak your offers over time. Your target audience changes as your business grows. The world keeps spinning, global pandemics break out, and new trends pop up in your industry.
Things change!
Updating your website copy regularly means that your website aligns with where you are in your business right now.
It's worth taking the time to update/renew/optimize/jazz up
The right new words can:
Keep you relevant: Industry trends and customer preferences change over time. Don’t get left behind.
Enhance SEO: Search engines loooove fresh and relevant content. They live off that stuff. Regular updates can help nudge Google into bumping your results up.
Create a better user experience: We all land on sites with outdated or inaccurate information. To be blunt? It sucks.
Keeping your copy up-to-date keeps leads happy. It also increases trust, which is huge for a service-based business or freelancer.
Showcase growth: You’re not the same business you used to be. Show ‘em what you’re working with.
"Okay, Kelley, I get it. I asked how often, though."
Don’t get mad, but—it depends!
It depends on things like:
Market/world/industry volatility
If there are a lot of rapid changes in your industry, update frequently to keep up. If you’re in a more chill space, you can leave things be for longer periods of time.
Analytics
Keep an eye on how your website is performing. Pages with high bounce rates or low engagement need more tweaks and optimization.
Major business changes
New product launch or entering a new market? That’s exciting. Put website copy updates on your launch list.
Business age
If you’ve been in business for a while and have your services dialed in, you won’t need a ton of updates. If you’re a business baby still working out the details of your branding/customer/services, you’ll make small changes more often.
How often you can stand it
You can’t be overhauling your entire website quarterly for the rest of your life, from a time or a budgetary standpoint. You wouldn’t get anything else done.
When it comes down to it, I’d recommend auditing your site every six months, and refreshing it every 1-2 years.
Yes, you can optimize without TOTALLY REDOING EVERYTHING
Refreshing your website copy doesn’t have to mean rewriting every freaking word from scratch every time.
You can optimize your existing content by:
- Infusing headlines with strategy
- Doing a solid for your reader and making things easier to read (shortening sentences and paragraphs, left-aligning text, etc.)
- Paying attention to the persuasive elements on each page
- Adding calls to action, and confirming that they make sense for that famous “customer journey” we hear so much about
- Updating button copy, working toward offering them something juicy with each click
- Adding, editing, updating testimonials all over the place, making sure they’re visible, out loud and proud
- …and soooo much more!
This is definitely something you can do yourself when you know where to start.
And if I were you, I’d start with friends.
Website Rewrite 101 gets you started with need-to-know website copywriting help, and keeps you on the path with 1:1 support and feedback. Not only do you learn about website copywriting, but you do it in community. It’s really cool.
You don’t have to do it all yourself. One payment gets you in for now, and keeps you there the next time you get hung up changing your services page. Just check it out.