1. It's Always Time to Update Your Website
Scott Juranek
The French philosopher Henri Bergson said, "To exist is to change, to change is to
mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly."
"If you've met one chamber, you've met ONE chamber." I've heard this statement
several times by different chamber executives. While it's true that all chambers are
distinctive and have a character all their own, it's also true that there are some patterns
we can chart across hundreds of chambers that can be highly instructive. At MicroNet
we're in the unique position of being able to see data from over 1300 chambers that use
our software for managing their day-to-day member management processes. As a
result, we've seen that as chamber websites are updated, their traffic starts a steady
climb upward.
Several chambers have just completed the spectrum from simple refreshes to major
facelifts, and in each instance, statistics for unique visitors as well as returners are on the
rise.
It's tough to know exactly when to make the
time and effort to update your site; however,
market forces wait for no one. For example,
only a few months ago you would have been
fine optimizing your site for Internet Explorer.
However, Google's Chrome browser is
beginning to overtake IE - meaning you'll need
to make sure your site is just as speedy and
looks as professional on at least three
browsers.
membership, marketing and website solutions
www.micronetonline.com | www.chambermaster.com | www.memberzone.com | 800.825.9171

2. Here are a few qualifying questions to help you decide if it's time to revisit
your website:
1. Are you concerned that your website isn't displaying correctly in the latest
browsers, including mobile browsers?
2. Are you using a technology that makes it difficult to update the content
yourself on a regular basis? Do you have easy access to a content
management system?
3. Has your website kept up with blogs, images, newsletters, videos, and links to
social media?
4. Is your site up to date with your branding? Is it a valuable asset for showing
members that your organization is current?
5. Is it easy for you to do banner advertising on behalf of your members?
6. Does your site compare well against competitors, such as national directory
sites? Is it something you can be proud of?
7. Is it optimized for search engines?
On this last point, one of the biggest reasons to update content is to improve your
search engine potential (the ability to show up for a certain search term, and hopefully
yours is higher than your competitors). Search engines love to see fresh, clean and
unique content: it gives them a reason to return to your site to see what's new. Creating
new content also gives you the opportunity to be found for phrases you weren't
previously talking about on your website.
It's important to note that updating or changing content is different from adding new
content. Revising content may actually drop your search engine potential if you remove
a valuable key phrase (say from the page title, or page headline). So it is important to
understand which of your pages are already generating good traffic, and monitor what
impact changes to content may have on your search ranking.
SEO 3.0 Compliance
Investing in making sure our website templates are SEO 3.0 compliant means our
membership, marketing and website solutions
www.micronetonline.com | www.chambermaster.com | www.memberzone.com | 800.825.9171

3. customers will have greater success with Bing and Yahoo, which are growing in
popularity. Another big change with SEO 3.0 is Google's addition of a preview pane. This
means visitors don't have to click to see your site-just hover. If you notice your traffic
declining, it might be because your home page doesn't compete well against others.
And the fewer people who visit your site, the lower your rankings will go.
If your traffic is standing still or declining, it's definitely time to look at a site refresh.
Scott Juranek is the CEO of MicroNet, Inc., providers of member management
software and website solutions for over 1300 Chambers of Commerce. His
background is in software development and he is very passionate about
using technology to make business easier. Scott and his family live in Nisswa,
Minnesota.
membership, marketing and website solutions
www.micronetonline.com | www.chambermaster.com | www.memberzone.com | 800.825.9171