A couple days ago, I mentioned a couple things maintenance-wise that you might want to do to your website during the slow after-holiday, beginning of the year period. As well as doing some spot checking and maintenance tasks on your website here are a few other tasks that you want do to during this slow period:
- Updating your social network profiles- if you have a profile on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace or any social network site make sure that your profile information is complete and up to date. Plus, if you have the ability to personalize your profile page, now would be a great time to do it. Don’t have a profile on a social network site? Now would be a good time to dip your toe in. If you don’t know much about social networking, check out my two part article series called “How to Use Social Networks to Market Yourself“.
- Planning- The beginning of the year is a great time to pre-plan your website promotions, advertising, and new content for the year. Take the time to schedule when your promotions will take place. Write out a list of things you need to do and your budget. It will save on last minute scrambling around for ideas later on in the year.
- Expansion or Redesign- If you’ve been meaning to expand or redesign your website do it now and use the unveiling as an excuse to run a spring promotion in March or April. I’ve recently finished a redesign of my jewelry website and I’m using the re-launch as a reason to run an online contest.
- New Content Creation- Having a steady stream of something new on your website, blog, or newsletter is a lot harder than it seems. Life and business gets in the way, or sometimes you just can’t get the energy and inspiration and next thing you know you everything is six to nine months old (trust me, I know!). Try writing some articles, blog posts, or other types of content during this slow period so that you’ll have something new to post when you’re stuck for time or inspiration.
- SEO Optimization- A lot of you guys have been using Website Grader’s SEO Tool to see how well your website is optimized for search engines. Once you get that score, you can use this slow time to do keyword research, search engine optimization, and link building.
- Traffic Building- If you’ve listened to my audio download, “10 Steps to Getting More Traffic on Your Website“, you would have heard me talking about using articles, blog comments, and a number of other things to help build traffic to your website. While none of these things are difficult, they do take some time to do and the benefits might not be seen right away. Why not use this slow time to get started? Just like planting seeds in the spring, the benefits of doing these traffic building tasks now will be realized later on when you don’t have time to concentrate on traffic building. Haven’t listened to “10 Steps to Getting More Traffic on Your Website“? Your first task would be get your own copy and listen to it right now!
