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Episode 140: How to Refresh Your Website without a Redesign
513 Plays3 years ago
In today's episode Krista and I are chatting about some our favorite end of year activities just to reflect on the past year. But then, we turn our attention to a few things that you can do on your website and get it looking fresh for the new year without having to do a full website redesign. Many of these activities don't take long but can really level up your website or at least give it a fresh new look. We also end by chatting about one of my favorite website activities that does take a little bit more time and that's running a content audit, but it is so worth it, I think, not only when it comes to SEO but just all around in content creation and coming out with new content ideas. We don't get too much into how to conduct a content audit, so if that's something that you would want to learn more about let me know and maybe we will create an episode around it. Just a quick note about content audits while don't talk in this episode about creating redirects or best practices for removing content that's all information you might want to look up before removing any content for your website. As always backing up the content near website regularly is a recommended practice.
For show notes visit...https://daveyandkrista.com/5-ways-to-refresh-your-website/
Recommended
Transcript
Impact of Brand Photography on Website Aesthetics
00:00:06
Speaker
A good amount of the space on your website is used by images. So if you have the ability to maybe even hire a brand photographer, we've talked with a couple of brand photographers on the show before and the difference that they make is massive. And then we personally worked with Renee Hollingside a few years ago and she took a bunch of great brand photos for us that just gave us a wealth of images to use for both social media and our website.
00:00:29
Speaker
If the season is a little slower for you or if the new year is a little slower for you and you have the ability to do that, I think it can make a huge difference on your website and really make your website feel cohesive, more polished, fresh, probably like you got a new website without actually taking the time to do an entire website.
Episode Introduction with Host Davy Jones
00:00:47
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
Website Refresh Tips for the New Year
00:00:56
Speaker
In today's episode, Chris and I are chatting about some of our favorite end of year activities just to reflect on the past year. But then we turn our attention to a few things that you can do on your website to get it looking fresh for the new year without having you a full website redesign. Many of these activities don't take long, but they can really level up your website or at least give it a fresh new look.
00:01:19
Speaker
We also end by chatting about one of my favorite website activities that does take a little bit more time. It is a little bit more time intensive and that's running a content audit, but it is so worth it. I think not only when it comes to SEO, but just all around in content creation and coming up with new content ideas, we don't get too much into how to conduct a content audit. So if that's something that you would want to learn more about,
00:01:44
Speaker
Let me know and maybe we'll create an episode around it. Just a quick note about content audits. While we don't talk in this episode about creating redirects or best practices for removing content, that's all information you might want to look up before removing any content from your website. As always, backing up the content in your website regularly is a recommended practice.
Engaging with Audience Feedback and Past Episodes
00:02:06
Speaker
Be sure to check out the show notes at dvandchrista.com for the resources that we mentioned during the episode. And we want to hear from you. Let us know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Brands that Work podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, just send us a DM on Instagram at dvandchrista. Also, we have quite a few past episodes about sort of end of year reviews and planning for either the next quarter or the next year. So be sure to check out those as well. You can find links to those in the show notes. Now on to the episode.
Reflection on the Past Year and Personal Milestones
00:02:39
Speaker
All right, welcome back to another episode of the Branson Book Podcast, one of our final episodes of the year. Yeah, I still can't believe that. I feel like maybe it's because we had a baby, but this year has just flown by, especially the last couple of months.
00:02:51
Speaker
I like how you use the collective we when you say we had a baby. I laugh at it because my family in particular gives me a lot of grief when I talk about us having a baby. All right. I birthed the child, but I mean, you help a lot during the whole pregnancy and postpartum process. So that's why I feel like it's a we.
00:03:15
Speaker
No, no. I get what you're saying. They always bring up the facts. They're like, Davey, exactly what did you do when giving birth? That is true. You ate a lot of food in the delivery room in front of me, which was not very nice. All right. And I'm digging myself a
Simple Website Refresh Tips
00:03:30
Speaker
hole.
00:03:30
Speaker
Today, we're chatting about end of year planning and specifically what to do to get your website ready for the new year. And there's a lot of things that you can do to your website, even if you're not planning a website redesign, right? Even if you're not planning to redo your website in a big way.
00:03:45
Speaker
there's still things that you can do that are going to give your website a fresh new look or a fresh feel going into the new year that really don't require a ton of time either. So we want to chat about that. We also want to just chat about some end-of-year planning in general too and a few things that we found helpful. So we're not necessarily laying out
00:04:02
Speaker
you know, an exact plan that you can follow to do end of year planning. I have done interviews with people in the past who have done such things. So the first one that comes to mind is Shay Cochran. She does, you know, this end of year retreat at the end of every year. I can't remember what episode number that is, but we'll throw it in the show notes. So if you want easy access to that, you can just either search her name on
00:04:22
Speaker
iTunes or whatever or head over to the show notes. So we're going to talk just generally about end-of-year planning and then we're going to jump into website updates that you can do here just to get your website ready for the next year.
Importance of Regular Website Updates
00:04:34
Speaker
These are a lot of things that we do to our own website. And again, like you said, they only take a couple of hours and they really do give your website a fresh look and feel without spending a lot of money. And then I think another great thing is that it keeps your website from being stale. So it's easy to just go a couple of years after you've launched your website and then forget to update these things. And then you realize that this doesn't really reflect my brand anymore. So if you do these periodically, especially in the off season, I think it makes a big difference.
00:05:00
Speaker
I think this is something that can help you carry momentum into the new year, sometimes too, especially a website might feel old to us because we're in our websites every single day. We can be more critical, right? And this is true of ourselves too. We can be more critical of our own website and feel like, oh, maybe I need to go out and redesign it.
00:05:19
Speaker
without really assessing, okay, what's working, what's not, do I really need to go through a website project right now or are there some simple updates that I can make that are going to make it feel fresh and reflect some of my latest work without having to go through a website project.
Year-End Financial Activities and Tools
00:05:36
Speaker
Cool. Well, let's start with some end-of-year planning stuff, and then we can jump into more website-specific items. So maybe I'll kick it over to you. In the past, as far as things that we've done at the end of the year just to prepare for the new year, what's one of your favorite things that we've done?
00:05:53
Speaker
This sounds so boring, but probably looking at expenses for the year. I knew you were going to say that. I knew that you were going to bring that up, but go ahead. Well, it's also really important to do that before you start prepping your taxes because our accountant always asks us for an itemized list of every expense that we have
00:06:10
Speaker
category that we've done. So he wants to know how much we spend on marketing and travel and all of those things. So end of the year, especially if it's your off season, it's a great time to actually sit down and do that, especially if you don't have help doing it throughout the year. In the past, we've used software like Wave. No, Wave. I always confuse Wave and Waze. Yeah, that's right. Wave and I don't know if Wave is still free or not. I know they were required by a bigger company at some point and we no longer use Wave. What do we use now?
00:06:38
Speaker
for bookkeeping. We use bench accounting, and there's actually a physical person that does this for us every month, but it's still not a hefty fee. It's not like hiring a private bookkeeper. Before anybody's listening, it's like, how does he not know what expense software we use? I know what bookkeeping software we use, but you're the one that's actually in there each month checking on the work that they're doing. Is that a tool that you would recommend to others?
00:07:02
Speaker
Oh yeah, I think it's like a game changer. I feel like before I had to manually categorize everything in WAVE and I also had to try to itemize like online payments and like what our PayPal and Stripe fees were because if they didn't hit your bank account, WAVE wouldn't calculate that. So there's just a lot of different moving pieces, especially if you have an online business or you take payments electronically. And so bench just does all of that for us. And I think it's like $60 a month. Like it's not that bad.
00:07:30
Speaker
It can't be. It's not $60 a month. Well, we'll have to look at that. Obviously, we need to go through our expenses. It's definitely not $60 a month. Like you said, it's probably still less expensive than finding a private bookkeeper that's going to do that for you
Pre-Black Friday Expense Review
00:07:47
Speaker
from month to month. So, we've really appreciated how that does automate things for us. There's still some work that we have to do each month to make sure that things are done correctly. They also have questions about things from month to month as well.
00:07:58
Speaker
but they just give me like a tiny little list of things that they have questions about that need to be categorized and so it's not bad at all and they break it down by a year and month and so you can see trends in your income expenses and then from there it's really easy to go in and look at your expenses and see
00:08:13
Speaker
what could possibly be cut. Like maybe you're paying for subscriptions that you're no longer using or you realize, oh, if I pay for this a year of it upfront, I'll save 10%, which is probably why I don't know what we did. We pay for a bench because I think I pay for the year in full. I don't know the monthly breakdown, but it's easy to look at things like that and see like maybe how could you spend money differently for your business next year.
00:08:36
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. We've already done this for the year. We've already gone through and looked at a lot of our expenses for the year. And just one tip for you too, especially this episode, of course, won't be out before Black Friday. But in the next year, one tip for you is to do this before Black Friday rolls around. Because a lot of our favorite tools, there's going to be Black Friday deals.
00:08:56
Speaker
Right. Even for existing users, oftentimes what they'll do is extend your subscription and get X amount off or upgrade to annual and get X amount off. And so by going through your expenses mid-November, not only can you check that off your list for the end of your planning, but then anything that you know you're going to use for the next year, perhaps you can upgrade and take advantage of some of those deals. So it's not only an opportunity to cut out stuff you're not using,
00:09:22
Speaker
but then it's an opportunity to look at the stuff you are currently using and be able to save some money in the coming year by signing up for a better deal. Yeah, totally agree. So, one thing we will find out is the current pricing structure for bench, but I can guarantee you. Sorry, guys. If you end up paying $60 a month for it, let us know because we want to know how you're doing that. So, anyways, moving on, you were talking about one of your favorite things to do is to take a look at all your expenses for the year. Yeah, what is one of your favorite things to do?
Setting and Achieving Short-Term Goals
00:09:52
Speaker
Yeah, so I really just like, one, I think the exercise, even if you don't have any sort of crazy system in general, I think the exercise of looking at the past year, seeing what works, and then looking ahead to the next year and setting some goals, it just feels good. You feel organized going into the year.
00:10:10
Speaker
So I think that's benefited enough to doing it. And I remember in years past where, you know, I'm thinking about one year in particular where we didn't really have a plan and we didn't really write a ton of stuff down. And I'm not recommending that people go about it this way, but even just sitting down and talking about it, you get excited for the new year. So even if you don't feel like you have a ton of time to do this, I recommend that you do it. But one of the things that I've learned is that I think it's important to set goals for the entire year. So to look ahead at least 12 months.
00:10:39
Speaker
dot on the map, okay, this is where I want to go. But I found that one of the more important things for me is to really get specific about the next month to three months. I think that that time period of approximately 90 days is really as far out as I can get specific about.
00:10:59
Speaker
I mean, so much can change. I mean, think about what, 2020? If January, you'd try to plan your year, it probably would have just completely been overridden, especially with things like we couldn't have predicted TikTok coming out and then Instagram reels and like how that's completely changed most people's social media. And so you can plan a little bit and you, like you said, you can have goals, but it's hard to just like have really tight things that you want to do because you have to be so open for change and flexibility.
00:11:27
Speaker
Yeah. And so what I found is that it's definitely still worthwhile to try to plan out the year at least loosely, you know, and look at all four quarters of the year. So I'm not saying not to do that, but I am saying that I have found that it's more meaningful for us at least to plan out the year and then really get specific about the one to three month.
00:11:47
Speaker
Time period one i think that creates momentum because you're looking at those things that are right in front of you you know and once you can start building some momentum earlier in the year i think that carries you throughout the rest of the year and then to like you were saying i think too it's not even just a matter of things being able to change but how much you know mentally we can really hold intention for a given amount of
Reviewing Past Achievements and Planning
00:12:08
Speaker
time.
00:12:08
Speaker
And I think when you set goals that are 30, 60, 90 days out somewhere in there, then it's far enough away where it's something that you can work to and you can have sort of a longer term vision for it, but then it's short enough where week one into it, you're actually making progress towards that goal.
00:12:25
Speaker
So one of the episodes that recently came out, I think it came out maybe the week of Thanksgiving is sort of my productivity system and it's sort of modeled in the same way where I'm looking at a given month and then I'm looking basically a week out and a day out. So what am I going to do today that's gonna help me reach whatever goal I've set for the end of the week and all of that should be rolled into whatever goal I've set for the end of the month. So anyways, that's kind of how I approach the year as well. Yeah, I think that's a really good one.
00:12:55
Speaker
Yeah, cool. Well, the only other thing that we should probably mention, unless you have something else, is reflecting on what's worked the past year and just reflecting on the past year in general. You know, I think that it does feel like the year has flown by, but when you start getting specific and start writing things down, you know, I think what you'll find is, oh wow, that happened this year, you know? And so, you know, accomplishments that happened, especially in the beginning of the year, maybe you've totally forgotten about, but I think it's good to reflect on those things before moving on to the next year.
00:13:23
Speaker
Right. So celebrate your wins and think about what was a big win and what maybe you thought would be a win that actually ended up not working out so well. Yeah, for sure. And you know, if you have friends, especially the other friends who are business owners, and you can do this with them, I think that's worthwhile. I'm thinking back to when we met with Anna and Ryan, who are two good friends of ours, Ryan now, one of my partners over at Till. You know, I think that's one of the most memorable, you know, sort of end of year, beginning of year plans that we put together.
00:13:49
Speaker
Yes. We took a few days to just talk about what worked and then we planned our next year together. Yeah. That was really fun. Yeah. It was fun and it was nice getting feedback from other business owners that we trust and respect, who are also friends. So that was good. Another year, we started rolling into personal planning, like just life planning into that. And I think that's a good activity for us to do together, especially since we both run businesses together, but then also we're married. We're married.
00:14:17
Speaker
Anyways, all that.
Clearing Spaces at Year-End
00:14:18
Speaker
I hope for what it's worth, take it for what it's worth and hopefully there's something in there that might help as you plan for the next year, but it's something that we would highly recommend doing. I can't even wait to clear off my desktop. That's something that I'll be doing here in December. Your computer desktop or your actual physical? Because both could use a clean. Okay, well thank you. I was talking about my computer desktop, but good to know.
00:14:38
Speaker
Guys, his computer desktop gives me anxiety. There's like a thousand folders. I don't even think it's possible to have that many folders. Yeah, I'm not proud of it, but I like the feeling of being nice and organized as well.
00:14:49
Speaker
You would never know looking at your computer. Oh, that is... Okay.
Updating Brand Images for a Fresh Look
00:14:53
Speaker
All right. Well, moving into some website-specific stuff. We published a YouTube video on this as well that you can check out that provides maybe things from a little bit of a different angle, but trying to round that out here in this episode. So, one of the things that I think makes a huge difference requires very little time updating your brand images.
00:15:12
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, if you look at your website, you can probably see that a good amount of the space on your website is used by images. So if you have the ability to maybe even hire a brand photographer, we've talked with a couple of brand photographers on the show before and the difference that they make is massive. And then we personally worked with Renee Hollingside a few years ago and she took a punch of great brand photos for us that just gave us a wealth of images to use for both social media and our website. So
00:15:39
Speaker
If the season is a little slower for you or if the new year is a little slower for you and you have the ability to do that, I think it can make a huge difference on your website and really make your website feel more cohesive, more polished, fresh, probably like you got a new website without actually taking the time to do an entire website.
00:15:56
Speaker
you know, if you turn this episode off right now and that's all you did, you'd feel like, oh, you know, it feels good to have that done on the website. And I think, you know, like you said, it almost feel like, oh wow, you know, is this a new website? I know. I would like new brand photos or us. We will see them this year, but then baby.
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. You know, so many things to plan around. But brand images do make a big deal. A couple of brand photographers that come to mind right off the top of my head that have been on the podcast. Renee, like you mentioned, she took brand photos for us a few years ago. Erica and John have been on the podcast and then Abby Grace has also been on the podcast. So those might be three episodes that you go and check out. Although I think Renee wasn't talking about brand photography and her, she was talking about traveling.
00:16:35
Speaker
Yes, that's a good episode too. Yeah, another one to check out. But brand images and headshots make a difference, especially if you're a photographer, this is actually pretty easy to do. A lot of times, back when we were shooting, back in the day, we would trade sessions with people. So, something to consider there. This is the second
Showcasing Recent Work Effectively
00:16:54
Speaker
thing. Again, I think even if you did just these two things, updating your portfolio and case studies on your website,
00:17:01
Speaker
So obviously if you're a visual artist of some sort, then we're probably talking about portfolio here. But you probably did some work in the past year that you're super proud of, that you would like to do more of. Now's the time to go and make sure that those galleries are front and center, I think, in your website. So not just updating your images, but maybe reorganizing some things and making sure that the work that you have done in the past that you really enjoy, that that work is front and center for people who are considering hiring you.
00:17:30
Speaker
Yeah. Cause especially if you're a photographer, things get really busy in certain seasons and you're probably shooting things that you really love and maybe you have the time to share them on social media, but then they never make it onto your website. And so you realize after a few months that your website just isn't reflective of the kind of work that you do. And so if this is a season where you have some time to work on that, I think that's a really good idea to go through and update the images on.
00:17:53
Speaker
your homepage and your services pages and definitely your galleries or case studies. And you know, the same is true if you're a designer, refresh your work, show off some of your favorite things that you've done this year. And I think it's going to make a big difference on your website. Yeah. And when you start thinking about it, right? Like you think about the raw materials that go into a website, at least as many people perceive them, it's your images and your copy. In some ways, if you update the images on your website, including your portfolio, you've updated half of your website. Yeah, that's true.
00:18:23
Speaker
Obviously, there's a little bit more that goes into a website than those two things, but in general, I think those are the two main raw materials. Case studies, updating case studies and going through, if you're the kind of business that maybe is not super visual but still builds trust through things like case studies, then adding to them or calling a few and replacing them,
00:18:44
Speaker
I think is again a good way not only to breathe some life into your website but then also you can start sharing about those on social media as well and you have a place to point people to.
00:18:54
Speaker
Right. Until is a good example of the kind of business that does that because it's not like each of your client is going to have a gallery of their ads on your website. So you guys do case studies and you show off a few ads, but then talk through because there's so much strategy involved with ad design. Yep, exactly. Moving on, speaking of the two raw materials, copy is the next one.
Refreshing Website Copy
00:19:13
Speaker
Now, typically for copy, we would recommend maybe starting with one page. Yes. Because when you think about rewriting every page of your site, that sounds like a huge task.
00:19:24
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So as far as copy goes, there's probably a page, if you're thinking about your website right now, that you think, oh, that could use a little freshen.
00:19:34
Speaker
Probably the about page, I feel like for most people. Yeah, for a lot of people it might be the about page, but it could be a services page, it could be your homepage, you know, just the language on your homepage, maybe in the hero spot, you want to rework that section, whatever it is, now's the time just to focus on that. You know, and I think that if you do take the time to update a single page, then you might find, okay, well, there's pieces of copy here that I've reworked that I really like that I want to put throughout other pages on my website. And all of a sudden, again, that's one of those things that builds momentum.
00:20:03
Speaker
But as far as copy goes too, copy kind of like your brand, it evolves and it grows. So over the course of the year, you may have figured out that there's a certain kind of customer or client that you really want to appeal to. And so you might have found that you're using certain language across social media that isn't really reflected on your website just because your website's not as dynamic as social media. It's not something where you're posting to necessarily every single day or multiple times a day.
00:20:30
Speaker
It's a good opportunity to go through maybe your social media feed, look at the ways that you've been trying to promote yourself or your voice on your social media feed, and make sure that's represented on your website.
00:20:41
Speaker
Yeah, and if you're like, what is my voice? We actually have a podcast episode about finding your brand voice. And then you've interviewed Jess Rodana a few times and she has a few really great resources. So she has what she calls promptlets and they go through different pages of your website and you can use those to generate the copy for your site. So if you're not hiring a copywriter, but you know that you just need some more guidance than just doing it on your own, that was probably a really great resource to look at.
00:21:08
Speaker
Absolutely. So the next thing that I want to talk about is testimonials, reaching out to customers and clients, and then I want to end sort of with one of our favorite but bigger website tasks
Updating Testimonials
00:21:19
Speaker
for the year. So talking about our testimonials and other things that are easy to update, hopefully you have a system for collecting testimonials throughout the year. I think it's always best to be able to reach out to people when they're happiest, when you've just delivered their work and asking them certain questions, maybe to get the best response.
00:21:36
Speaker
Even if you don't know, it's totally okay to reach out to people throughout the past year that you've worked with and ask them if they can leave some feedback. Now, for some of you, that might be sending you over a testimonial that you can then use on your website or asking people to leave like a Google review or view on WeddingWire or wherever else that you collect reviews. Right. But freshening those up I think can help with the copy activity as well.
00:22:01
Speaker
Yes, because you see the kinds of words that they use to describe your business. You see what really resonates with your clients. So if you're a photographer and someone always says how calming you are on a wedding day, or maybe a lot of people say that you're calming presents on your wedding day, maybe that's something that you really hone in on on your copy because that might make you stand out from everyone else around you.
00:22:22
Speaker
Yeah, and it's always good to for not only will inform your own copy, but then when somebody else is on your website, it's always good seeing what other customers have to say, right? Because again, that might resonate more than maybe some of the marketing language that we're using on our own websites. Yeah. So that's good. That's something that's easy to do. Typically, people are more than willing to do that, even if they don't respond right away. A lot of times just because people are busy. It's not because they don't want to.
00:22:47
Speaker
We have found that asking particular questions like, what did you enjoy most about working with us? Would you recommend us to a friend if they were on the fence about hiring us? A few questions like that really give people an idea what to write. Because if you just ask somebody to give you a testimonial, it can be a little overwhelming for them to figure out what to say. So giving them prompts really helps.
00:23:07
Speaker
And we have a blog about this, right? Yes. Okay, awesome. Maybe we should do a podcast episode about this as well. That sounds like a good idea. All right, cool. So the last thing that we want to mention is a little bit more time intensive, and it's going to maybe sound a little overwhelming to some people.
Content Audits for SEO Improvements
00:23:25
Speaker
That's okay. We'll talk more about it in a second. It's really not, I don't think it's really that intensive an activity. I do want to say that these first four things that we talked about, if you did just those,
00:23:36
Speaker
it might take you a couple hours, less probably if you don't have to reach out to people for testimonials and things like that. And it will make a huge difference on your website. Totally. So even if you did those four things, that'll put you in a great spot. Even if you did, you know, heck, the first two things, right? Updating your brand images and then updating your portfolio or updating your case studies, that would make a big difference on your website. So don't think that you have to do every single one of these things or it's not worth it.
00:24:03
Speaker
especially as we get into this fifth thing. And this fifth thing is conducting what we call a content audit. And we don't just call it a content audit. If you were to Google how to do a content audit, all sorts of stuff would pop up. But I feel like this is one of your favorite things about website. It is going back to just getting organized. Also too,
00:24:21
Speaker
As you start planning content for the new year, this is something that ideally, again, you could do maybe at the end of November, maybe before whatever end of year or beginning of year retreat you do. Because I think that this is going to help you plan content for the new year.
00:24:36
Speaker
So, a few reasons that you should consider doing a content audit. And basically, by content audit, all we mean is that you're going through all the content that you publish, especially that content on your blog. You're assessing what you have, you're assessing kind of what holes maybe you need to fill, and you're assessing what content either needs to be revised or needs to just be removed because it's no longer relevant to what you do.
00:24:59
Speaker
One of the reasons that you should do a content audit beyond it's just gonna help you get organized is that there's some SEO benefit as well. Because when you go back and you start refreshing old posts that are still relevant, but maybe they just need to update. For instance, when I Google something, I sort by content that's been updated in the last year or month typically. Because I wanna make sure that I'm seeing the most up-to-date stuff.
00:25:25
Speaker
This is especially true of more tech-oriented things when if I'm troubleshooting something in WordPress, I could find an article that was written about it 15 years ago. Things are vastly different, right? Yes, that's very true. And I think there's value to calling old stuff, especially if it's sending traffic to your website that you don't necessarily want.
00:25:46
Speaker
Yeah, it also gives you an idea of what's actually resonating with people on your website and what that you could elaborate on or expand upon. So if you have a piece of content that is doing really well and it's sending a lot of traffic to your website, especially if it's been picked up by search engines or it's doing really well on Pinterest, this might be a good way to come up with ideas that you can use to expand upon that content.
00:26:08
Speaker
There's a number of different ways that you can do this. One way would be just to export all your posts from WordPress into a spreadsheet, you know, and create a couple columns and remove, revise, keep as is, something like that, right? If you want to take another step, you can throw Google Analytics in the mix. And really, if you're going to remove or really should be making a decision as far as removing and revising based on Google Analytics and Google Search Console,
00:26:31
Speaker
So you don't want to remove a post that's actually doing really well because you just think maybe no one's looking at it. And this is one of the reasons why you do an activity like this because every year I'll get in there and realize, oh heck, there's a post that I wrote that I maybe have totally forgotten about or I didn't think was doing particularly well and wow, it's getting more traffic than I thought. Or it's been getting increasingly more traffic over the course of last year. So that kind of stuff I'm going to be informed about because of Google Analytics.
00:26:59
Speaker
So the tools that I'm using are Google Analytics and Google Search Console. I'm going into Google Analytics and I'm looking at behavior, all right? And so that's a tab in Google Analytics and I can look at all pages and I can filter by the last year, the last month, the last three months to see how much traffic that page is getting. But then also in Google Search Console, I can go in there and I can look at the performance section of Google Search Console and I can see, okay, for what queries or searches
00:27:28
Speaker
are pages of Davey and Krista showing up in Google, you know, and then I can see things like, you know, kind of the average click-through rate, the average amount of impressions, you know, those sorts of things, and that's going to help me identify low-hanging fruit. So, for instance, if something's showing up in position 8 to 20, let's say, then that indicates to me, okay, wow, so this is pretty good content because it's showing up on the top of the first page or the bottom or on the second page of the Google search results.
00:27:55
Speaker
And I'm going to spend time updating that because it will probably be easier for me to get that post or page from page two to page one instead of creating new content that has to go from unranked to page one.
00:28:08
Speaker
Right. That's a really great point. Another thing that I look at is the source of the traffic. So if we have some posts and Pinterest is sending them a ton of traffic, we might make some new pin graphics and start sharing those and trying to drive more traffic to that post. Because if you see that something is already doing really well, you might be able to make some new graphics for Pinterest that send even more traffic that way.
00:28:30
Speaker
Yeah, and that's a good point because it's not all about Google here. I'm focused a little bit more on Google and search, whereas your focus, you tend to gravitate towards seeing what does well on social. And both those things are important and deserve attention.
00:28:45
Speaker
Right. And we do the same thing with Instagram and Facebook too. We'll see what is just doing well in general.
Resharing Successful Content and Trends
00:28:50
Speaker
And then we'll reshare old content because if it's good content, it's always going to be good content. And so you can use that to plan your social media calendar ahead. Our DK calendar is planned several months in advance, but we move things around, but we take the content that is doing well and we reshare posts to that.
00:29:08
Speaker
Yeah, and what you'll find is that there's probably a lot of content that you've already created that doesn't need to be reinvented. If you're a wedding photographer and you're talking about the nine best engagement locations in your area, you don't have to redo that post, but you might update it based on new areas that you've shot, or you might update it just with new sessions that represent each of those areas. And that kind of stuff is important, especially if you want a post like that to continue ranking.
00:29:37
Speaker
So, we would highly recommend doing something like that. It does take a little bit of time. I probably put a little bit of a time to it each day for a week. By the end of the week, I have a pretty good idea of what's going on. This is not something that has to be done perfectly. I'd say that even if you do an imperfect job of maybe quickly jumping into your posts, your Google Analytics, Google Search Console, maybe looking at Pinterest or whatever it is, yeah, at least you're getting a sense in the idea of content that's resonating.
00:30:04
Speaker
And from there, not only will you find posts that you can revise and then reshare, but then you'll also come up with new ideas.
00:30:12
Speaker
Yes, definitely. So if you wanna know more about content audits, let me know and I'll record an episode on them. You know, it's probably best not to get ourselves further into the weeds about content audits. Yeah. But happy to provide more information about that for anybody who's interested. I really do think that's one of the more valuable activities that we do, especially as we plan for the new year and look at what's been working in the past year. Yep, I totally agree.
00:30:37
Speaker
Awesome, well, that's it. We do have a guide. I think it's a website. Off season, DIY off season website review, I think. Yeah, and we should update that. Yeah. Speaking of content, we need to update. The content in it is still good. Yes. So you can check that out. That'll be in the show notes. We have a YouTube video that covers a lot of the same content here. And this is, I think, our maybe third year of podcasting. So lots of episodes in the past about quarterly planning. I think that one was Cash Moyer.
00:31:06
Speaker
End of year reviews and planning, Shay Cochran, and I'm sure there's other ones in there. Yes, we'll put links in the show notes to some of the good ones. Absolutely. Well, we hope everybody has a great end of year and head start in next year. Yeah. Happy New Year.
00:31:25
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.