One of the beautiful things about a website is how easy it is to update. There’s no need to wait for a new edition or reprints. In one sense, it’s a living informational text that grows and changes with your organization. That’s also its downside; because like a living organism, it also requires consistent care to thrive. Even if you’re a dab hand at keeping on top of your website, it’s possible (easy even) to miss things.

That’s why, on a recent webinar, I encouraged hospitality professionals to engage in an annual review of their websites, from homepage to metadata, photo gallery to booking blurb. Because your website content, like the food in your fridge, can become stale or even go bad. More than once a year is smart, but you should be reviewing your content at least once every 12 months. (You probably want to review the contents of your fridge more frequently.)

Here are the chief reasons you need to do an annual review of your content, regardless of your industry.

Mistakes (and discrepancies) creep in over time.

Nobody’s perfect; mistakes happen. And when they’re your own, they can be hard to spot. Even if you’re the picture of editorial perfection [insert eyeroll], chances are you’re not the only person making updates to your site.  An annual review gives you a chance to catch embarrassing typos that you or others previously missed. It also helps you spot discrepancies, such as when updates get made to a homepage but not the relevant subpages.

Branding gets updated.

Your company changed their signature color or tagline, or perhaps they’ve recalibrated their tone of voice to be less stodgy. It doesn’t happen every day, but it happens more frequently than you may think. Hopefully, someone did a pass of the website when the new branding was implemented, but unless he or she went through page by page, it’s likely a few instances were missed.

Your offerings change.

Programs and products get added, they get dropped, and they get revamped or renamed (see the point above on branding updates). Sometimes these changes don’t get passed along as web updates, especially when something gets discontinued, which tends to happen more quietly than when a new service or amenity gets launched.

This point is especially important in the hospitality sector, whose websites are often scrutinized by customers who want to know what to expect before they show up (and are often vocal when the website and actuality don’t match).

An annual review helps ensure your website accurately reflects and promotes your current services and offerings in the most up-to-date terms and details.

The world around you keeps moving.

Just as your organization and its offerings are growing and changing, so are the entities around you. If your site references local highlights, area businesses, or partner venues, an annual review provides a valuable time to check if those organizations are still functioning, still relevant, and still going by the same name. 

The physical landscape isn’t the only one that changes. So does the linguistic one. Reviewing your text gives you the opportunity to freshen up verbiage that’s gone stale, getting rid of last year’s overused buzzwords as well as slang expressions and catchphrases that have aged out of usage (or should).

Things fall apart.

Things break—links, photos, pages, forms, et cetera. You name it, and you can find a website out there where it’s broken. Sometimes seemingly without reason—but there’s probably a reason: Someone archived a photo with old branding, but it’s still slotted in the site gallery. A vendor you link to changed their site structure without implementing redirects. An update on your site’s coding broke all your forms. 

It happens. But broken items on your site offer a less-than-stellar user experience and a less-than-tempting testimonial. Those broken elements read like boarded-up windows to passing browsers, making them wonder if anyone’s home. But unless you’re reviewing your content (or you get a helpful user complaint), needed repairs can go unnoticed for too long.

While an annual review is an opportunity to fix problems and correct mistakes, it’s also a great time to strengthen your content. Use the review period as an opportunity to identify content gaps, update photos, and re-evaluate your SEO. In other words, your annual review should be holistic, not just a site proofread. It’s a total examination of your website’s health. 

Perhaps your time resources are limited. Perhaps your company’s websites number in the hundreds. Perhaps you need help. Outsourcing your annual review(s) to a content maintenance vendor with strong editorial is a great solution. However, to get the most out of any annual review, you will need to participate. A vendor can learn your branding and audience, but you’re the subject matter expert. 

Over the years, EVG Media has helped maintain hundreds of hospitality sites, ensuring their content is current, on brand, and optimized. Ask how we can do the same for you.