Hopefully you have already done a lot of work to get your business off to a good start for the new year. But have you done the basic maintenance yet?

There are some things you should do regularly to keep your website running smoothly. It can be a bit of a pain at times but it is also very necessary.

Start off with any copyright notice you may have on your website. Is it current? If not, update it with either the current year or find way to have it update automatically. If your site can run PHP, for example, you can put the following code within the PHP code to just show the current year:

echo date(”Y”);

Now is also a good time to test your links. Not just the internal ones that really should work at all times… check the ones pointing to outside sites. Businesses disappear, they redo their sites or drop a product… if you can avoid linking to dead pages you will look much more professional.

Next take a look at your site. Is it time for an update? You want a great current look. Maybe this is the year you can start using CSS on your pages to make it easier to change the look if you haven’t already tried it. Yes, it’s one more thing to learn, but it’s not that hard and very useful. Your pages will load faster if all the design elements are in one file rather than on every single page.

Also consider updating how you communicate with customers. Think about experimenting with podcasting, video or RSS feeds. Appropriate use of these technologies can really improve your site, making it friendlier and more interesting to visitors.

You should also take a look at your site’s focus. Are you getting away from where you want to be? It might be time to refocus things and possibly to spin off a related site if you find you have a lot to say on something that isn’t quite in line with the focus of the site it’s starting to appear on.

Finally, look at what your customers are looking for. Pay attention to how the search engines are finding you as well as what customers are saying to you. There are great ideas to be found in how people find your site.

Taking a bit of time to freshen things up and keep your site looking professional is very much worthwhile. Your site is how visitors see you online, so maintaining and updating it is very important to your business.

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