In today’s blog we’re going to talk about how to prepare your website for the new year, as the office empties out and the silly season is upon us.

Having a strong online presence is important, so here are some tips to get you ready:

1. Make sure your content is up to date
Content updates may include blog posts, event details, price lists or new product descriptions. This is an easy way for you to make sure your customers are receiving relevant information.

2. Check that links aren’t broken
There is nothing worse than clicking on a link that leads to an error message. Most of the time, this shouldn’t take too long to fix up so it is worth doing a quick check before the new year.

3. Use keywords to boost SEO
Search engines will check your website for relevant keywords. Having a keyword in your domain name will also help increase your ranking.

We spoke to True Tamplin, SEO Expert and author of best-selling Raising an Executive: Igniting Your Son’s Inner Executive To Outperform His Peers and Continue Your Legacy, who shares his thoughts on incorporating keywords into your webpages as well.

"Whenever creating a new page, unless you don't care if people see it, you need to have a focus keyword (with high search volume) for that page. Include the focus keyword in context in the title tag and include semantic derivatives in the H1 and H2's of the page."

Want to find out more about SEO? Our friends at VentraIP have written a great blog post on how to Boost your SEO in 5 minutes or less.

4. Check your Google Analytics

Google Analytics are extremely helpful when it comes to understanding your audience and creating a better user experience. You can find out which pages most visited and where visitors are coming from.

5. Survey your customers

Create a survey to ask your customers a few quick questions on your product/service/brand and host the survey on your website. Questions could be as simple as ‘Do you find our website useful?’ or ‘How did you find out about us?’ These results will be helpful in planning for 2019 and in understanding areas for improvement.

Ensuring your customers have access to relevant information is crucial to your brand. Now is the perfect time to tidy up your website and get ready for the new year!

If you are only just starting out your website, check out our Registrar Page, which gives you access to a range of fantastic packages where you can create your very own .au domain name.