We don't recommend saving website maintenance for a once per year spring cleaning but if you have fallen a bit behind now is a great time to spruce things up for spring.

Owning a CMS website gives you lots of control for adding new content and updating items when you need to.  It's important to have a checklist for website maintenance to keep things working smoothly for you and to keep delivering a superior user experience for your prospects and customers. Some businesses have technical personnel on staff to handle many of these tasks and some companies don't.  At any time you need assistance - please don't hesitate to ask for help.

Here is a short manageable list of items to consider.

On a weekly basis:

• Add fresh content
• Fix broken links
• Create backup copies of your website before and after changes

Monthly or Quarterly:

• Review your analytics (Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, etc.) and address issues uncovered or opportunities presented
• Reassess keywords and update your strategy for keywords
• Cleanup on page SEO items (meta titles, descriptions, content) and off page (links, fresh posts, etc.)
• Test your site in various browers and via mobile devices
• **Check for Upgrades and updates for modules and plugins, etc. - please contact us if you need some assistance
• Use security procedures to keep your site secure

Yearly:

• Update your copyright date
• Review your site for consistent branding and usage of fonts, colors, etc.
• Renew your domain name to avoid expiration status

One last resource ... if you missed one of our latest blog entries, we talked about analyzing your website for 6 common failures, you may wish to see how your website is fairing against the list of 6 tips.  

Please remember you are not alone - we have website maintenance plans, blocks of time for developer assistance, online marketing strategy and plan implementation services available.  An email to Sales will get the conversation started.

Happy Cleaning!

The world of SEO - search engine optimization is in constant flux.  If you don't have an active SEO plan you are more than likely losing ground to your competition.

SEO is about getting found when your prospect doesn't know your company name or website url.  They are searching for information, maybe just for research, perhaps they are in purchase mode and ready to buy and possibly they are looking for customer support, a different vendor and a better experience than what they have with their current vendor.

You want your web pages returned in the SERPs (search engine results pages) - preferably on the first page -because not too many of us venture past that first page.

Your optimization plan should include:

• Taking a good look at your website architecture, your Meta data, content, internal links and overall user experience 
• You should have an on-going plan to tweak your SEO opportunities and keep an eye on what your competition is up to
• Having content to share and post around the internet will help drive traffic back to your website
• Participating in social spaces like, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter will give you the opportunity to create posts that link back to your website and content and introduce new visitors to your site

This kind of plan will start producing some better organic results than you are seeing today.  Visit our Resources pages for training, webinar and workshops to get better search engine ranking and indexing in 2013.

We are keeping an eye on Google's 2013 changes to search algorithms and will share the news.  It will be worth noting so that you can take action to stay on top.

Update - Power has been restored to the main facility.

Connectivity is online and customer data is flowing. Monitoring is active on all links.

Power is still being supplied via generator while the UPS recharges up then will automatically switch back to line power. ETA is approximately 60 minutes.

We'll continue to update this event in our systems and continue to send announcements as we progress.

Update - Power has been restored to the main facility. The facility is on generator power at the moment and a plan is being developed by building staff to restore line power.

Connectivity is being restored and we are working on bringing customer services back online in an orderly fashion. Systems are being tested as they are brought online to ensure proper operation.

We'll continue to update this event in our systems and continue to send announcements as we progress.

Update - Power has been restored to the main facility. Facility is on generator power at the moment.

Connectivity should come back online momentarily.