This post will cover small housekeeping content items that are important to keep your site up to date, and help the search engines know your content is current.

The New Year is a time for fresh starts and new beginnings. It’s a time to begin forming new habits and a time to look back….okay okay, sorry, everyone already knows all of this.  I’ll spare you the cheesy ‘New Year, New Me’ punch line and get right to the point! As 2018 kicks off we know your club is busy, which is why we wanted to hit you with a quick reminder about freshening up the content on your site and why it is so important.

The Small Things:

As we begin the new year many of the documents on the site will become out of date.  It’s important to make sure your private club is keeping things current on both the public and private side of the website so users can find the information they need. The beginning of the year is a great time to do a sweep of the site and replace content, documents, and events that are recently outdated.

Here is a list of a few things to look out for:

  1. Old tournament information
  2. Outdated dining menus
  3. Past club events
  4. Expired promotional materials
  5. Former staff contact information

The Bigger Picture

Trust me when I say that we understand how much work goes into deciding what content should represent your private club to potential members.  My next sentence might cause you to close out of this post and pretend you never saw it, but hang with me! A general best practice is to update your public content every 3-6 months in an effort to keep search engines engaged. By updating the content you are showing the search engines that your site is current and dynamic. This gives them a reason to continuously come back to the site to check out what is new, resulting in higher search rankings. The new year is a great time to kick start this and form an internal plan for moving forward.

Here are some places to make updates that will keep your site dynamic and the search engines engaged:

  1. Updating a hyperlink on the page? Update the text that goes with the hyperlink as well. Get rid of the simple “click here” and include keywords in the linked text because this content is marked as high priority to the search engines.
    1. Old: Click here for the membership brochure
    2. New: The XYZ Country Club’s Membership Information Packet
  2. Look for big paragraphs with lots of information and see if you can break the paragraph down into bulleted lists. Your end user is viewing your website as opposed to actually reading it. Give them bite size pieces of information that are easy to digest.
  3. Are there multiple pages you can combine into one? Maybe you have a main Dining page and a page for Dining Hours.  Instead of keeping these separate, merge the pages together to eliminate a sub page. Less is actually more when it comes to SEO! Google changed how pages are ranked and stopped favoring sites with more pages and began favoring website with quality information spread over less webpages. Plus, you pick up the added benefit of the information being easier to find for visitors.
  4. Are there pages that seem to be too overwhelming and packed with information.  See if there is content that can be eliminated or that is better suited for the private side of the site. This relates back to point #2 and #3. People like to skim for the information they need and pages with too much information make that difficult for your end user. Search engines also favor higher quality content, rather than filler text.

While going through these changes and updating your site, always remember the teams at Clubessential are happy to assist you and answer any questions!  Our Client Resource Center is also a great place to turn to for additional help and resources.

If you are interested in learning more about what Clubessential can do for your private club through Search Engine Optimization or Content Management, please contact us.

Happy New Year everyone!