As Google continues to modify its search algorithm to reward what it considers the “best” websites with treasured Page 1 rankings, companies with older websites may find themselves falling to the cutting room floor.

What worked five, eight, 10 years ago, likely isn’t as effective next to shiny new competitor websites that have been optimized to meet Google’s updated search standards.

In order for your website to perform to its full potential, a commitment to ongoing maintenance is a required. This is necessary for higher Google rankings and will prevent your site from looking dated. But, over time, even the most well-maintained websites will eventually need a redesign.

Here are some website design tipoffs that will tell you if your site is outdated and in need of an update or redesign.

You may not have heard about it, but you’ve likely felt some of the reverberations: Google unleashed a major core update to its search algorithm at the beginning of December.

Although Google says it constantly fine-tunes its algorithm, this was the first major update since May. While an update was overdue – Google usually averages around three major updates a year – the timing of this one, right in the middle of the holiday season, was an unwelcome surprise.

Websites that track Google changes identified the December update as more dramatic than the May rollout. Results fluctuated for websites across a wide range of industries in all geographic areas on both desktop and mobile platforms. Some sites reported traffic drops of as much as 40% because of the update.

Even disregarding the current pandemic, 1995, the year our company was founded, seems a world away.

Bill Clinton was in his first term as president … the Dow Jones, which first surpassed 30,000 last month, ended 1995 at 5,117 … the U.S. population was at 267 million (compared to 331 million today) … and only 12% of those people owned mobile phones in 1995. Cell phone ownership today is estimated at 96% of the population.

We frequently recommend that our clients include a blog as part of their websites and that they publish posts regularly on a set schedule.

But we rarely get into the nitty-gritty of blogging.

Why Blog?

Blogging is important for several reasons. The most crucial from our perspective is that it’s good for SEO and content marketing.

Freshness continues to play a role in search engine algorithms – the search engines generally reward sites that are regularly updated. A blog is an easy way to provide fresh content.

Internal links also are a factor in search engine algorithms. A blog post can – and should – provide the opportunity to link to a couple of your most important pages.

Of course, there are added benefits to blogging. A regularly maintained blog can:

• Develop and strengthen relationships with new and existing customers
• Increase your brand awareness
• Position your company as an industry leader

Taken together, all of these reasons make blogging a good idea.

On a fairly frequent basis, we’re contacted by folks who would like to find out “what’s wrong with their site,” which had been performing well on Google until a few years ago.

The simple SEO tricks that previously generated Page 1 rankings on Google aren’t working anymore. The assumption is that someone, a web developer or rogue employee, did something wrong and there’s a simple fix that we can provide to bump the site back to its prior Google rankings.  Or, they understand that Google has made updates to its algorithm, so they want to get the new SEO tricks that will improve their site’s performance.

Unfortunately, in most cases, we find ourselves to be the bearers of bad news.

In recent years, Google has expanded its search algorithm to include technical factors that measure site performance and usability, and it continues to increase those standards. Site speed has become important enough to Google that it now provides a tool where you can see how well your site performs and obtain recommendations from the search giant on improving its performance. 

Improving site speed helps your company in two important ways:  1) It can boost your search engine rankings, and 2) it gives your site visitors a better overall experience, which may lower bounce rate and encourage visitors to spend more time clicking through your site.

Running a Google PageSpeed Insights evaluation on your website will most likely reveal some commonly known problems. Here is a list of those usual suspects and some recommendations and tools to help you boost your score.

When most people think of the Americans with Disability Act, they think of physical barriers, like buildings without ramps or elevators.

But the ADA applies to websites as well, and companies are being sued for having inaccessible websites.

Common Problems

You may want to say, “I don’t get any disabled website visitors,” but you have no way of knowing that, and disabilities are far more common than most people realize. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 56.7 million U.S. residents (18.7% of the population) have some sort of disability, and 38.3 million residents (12.6%) have a severe disability.