Generating Timeless Content

Writen by Tim Priebe

Let's face it. Although there are sections of your site that you will hopefully update continuously (see previous entry on Generating fresh content), there are others that will likely remain untouched for years at a time. If you have a page with the history of your company, that's not the type of thing that will change from day to day. Or if you're an award winning artist, although you will hopefully continue to win awards, it's not going to be happening on a daily basis.

So when you are writing the content of pages that will likely not be updated on a regular basis, there are a few things you will want to avoid so that the content can be more timeless.

1. Always mention dates, not ages.

Don't say that your company is five years old. If you do, you'll have to go in every anniversary of your company and update that figure. Instead, say the year or date that your company started.

The same thing applies to biographies of individuals. If you really want people to know how old that person or those people are, give their birthday, not their age. If worst comes to worst, say things like "over 15 years of experience," or "our company has been in operation for over 50 years."

Of course, if your site is written wholly or in part by a programmer, it is possible for them to calculate those ages automatically with a program. But for the typical website creator, the date will be sufficient.

2. Don't double up on content.

Let's say that your email address is mentioned throughout your website, as well as on your Contact page. Over the course of a couple of years, your site could very well grow to be a couple hundred pages. If you now decide to change your email address, you are stuck changing it on every page it appears on. Dozens, to say the least.

Instead, in every place that you instruct someone to contact you, simply place a link to your contact page.

3. Simply don't mention facts that are likely to change.

Let's say your business has a high turnover rate in regards to employment. Maybe you hire college students. Whatever the case may be, you don't want to have to update your staff page every two weeks.

Instead, simply mention the more permanent employees, like yourself. If you want to mention the other employees at all, talk about them generically. If they are college students, you could mention that. But only be as specific as absolutely necessary.

4. Don't talk about specific technologies that are likely to change.

We live in a world with constantly changing technology. Where were all the blogs in 2000? They really didn't exist. So when working on pages that will likely not be updated often, don't mention specific technologies.

Instead of mentioning an email newsletter or a blog, simply talk about how open your company's communication policy is, and that you use technology standards. Then on the page that actually houses your blog or the sign-up form for your email newsletter, you can go into more specifics.

As you design your site, make sure you decide early on which pages are going to warrant constant updates and which are not. Then these guidelines can be used to help you write for those pages.

Tim is the owner and senior web designer at T&S Web Design. His company has developed and maintained website for dozens of small businesses and organizations. Tim also maintains a blog with free website advice for small business owners, GetASiteOnline.com.