A news page that stopped in 2016 tells visitors the business may have stopped too. Restart it with a plan small enough to keep, turn the useful posts into undated articles, or remove it and redirect the old addresses.

Three posts and then nothing

The menu says News. The page lists three entries: the launch of the new website in March 2016, a welcome to a new staff member that June, and the Christmas hours for that December.

Nothing since. The staff member may have moved on, the Christmas hours are three Christmases old, and the new website is not new any more.

Nobody at the business opens that page, because nobody there needs to. Visitors do, because it sits in the main menu and promises to say what is happening now.

What the dates tell a visitor

A visitor deciding whether to call you is looking for reasons to believe you are open, busy and paying attention.

Every post carries a date, and the newest one answers a question the visitor never meant to ask: when did anybody here last have something to say?

Three years is long enough for one plausible answer to be that the business has closed. Most visitors will not conclude that, but some will hesitate, and hesitation is when they go back to the search results.

A sidebar listing recent news spreads the problem further, putting the 2016 headline on every page of the site.

How news pages stop

The second does the most damage, because it sets a pace no small business keeps. A plan that fails in its sixth week leaves the same gap as having no plan, plus a dated record of the failure.

Three honest options

There are three ways out, and each suits a different business.

Restart the page with a plan small enough to survive a busy year. Convert the useful posts into undated articles that stay true. Or remove the section and send its old addresses somewhere sensible.

The wrong option is the fourth, and the usual default: leave it and hope nobody clicks.

Restarting with a plan you can keep

Four posts a year is a plan. One each season, written in the week the season changes, about something a customer would actually want to know.

Write the list of topics now, a year's worth in one sitting, so that each post starts from a subject rather than a blank page.

The best subjects are questions customers already ask, changes in what you offer, and the jobs that come with each season. Three hundred words and a photograph of your own is enough.

A page with a modest post every three months looks alive. A page with ten posts in one January and nothing since looks like a plan that was abandoned.

Turning news into undated articles

Many old news posts are not really news. A post about preparing for a first appointment, or caring for something after a job is done, stays useful for years.

Those can become articles: retitled, checked for anything out of date, and moved to a section called advice or guides, with the dates no longer shown.

The genuinely dated items, the launch and the old holiday hours, can go. A staff welcome belongs on the team page, if the person is still there.

A worked example

An independent pharmacy in a suburban plaza had a news page with three posts, the last about holiday hours in December 2016.

Two of the three were actually useful: one on moving a prescription from another pharmacy, one on getting rid of expired medicines safely. They had been written as news because that was the only place the site offered.

Those two became articles in a new section called pharmacy advice, with the dates removed. The holiday notice was deleted and its address redirected to the contact page.

The pharmacy then committed to one short article a season, picked from a list of twelve topics drawn up in a single meeting, each written by the pharmacist who hears that question most.

The menu now says pharmacy advice rather than news, which promises something the pharmacy can keep delivering.

Removing it properly

If the section is going, take it out of the menu, then deal with every address it created, not just the page called news.

Blogging software makes more pages than it shows: an archive for each month, a page for each category, and sometimes a page for each author. Search engines may know all of them.

Whoever maintains the site should redirect each removed post permanently to the most relevant remaining page, so links from other sites and old search results still reach a useful page instead of an error.

And take the recent news widget out of the sidebar, or it will keep announcing a section that no longer exists.

Why small beats ambitious

A visitor does not count your posts. They read the newest date and judge the gap between it and today.

That makes consistency worth far more than volume. Four short posts a year never leave a gap much longer than three months; forty posts in one spring leave a gap that grows from the day they stop.

A small plan also survives the busy season, the holiday and the week somebody is ill, which is exactly when ambitious plans fail.

The counter-case

Some businesses lose little to an old news page.

If the section is not in the menu and nothing links to it, few visitors ever see it, and the decision can join the next round of changes to the site.

A business whose clients arrive almost entirely by referral is judged less on how fresh its site looks, though the referred client still looks it up before calling.

And removing a section is not a failure. For a business with nothing to say regularly, a site with no dated pages is better than one that keeps proving it has gone quiet.

Restart it small, convert it, or remove it properly; the only option that costs you is leaving it.

This week

  1. Open your news page and read the newest date.
  2. Choose one of the three options.
  3. Keep the posts that answer real questions.
  4. Write a year of topics in one sitting.
  5. Delete the dated notices and redirect them.
  6. Remove the recent news widget if it is stale.
  7. Put the next post in the calendar.

Step four is what keeps a restart from becoming another three posts. Most plans stop at the moment somebody has to think of a subject, so the subjects need to exist before the first post is written.

The other dates a visitor notices first are covered in your footer still says 2018.

Frequently asked questions

Does an old news page really matter?

Yes, if it is in the menu. The newest date tells visitors when anybody last had something to say, and three years is long enough to make some of them hesitate.

What are the options for a stale news page?

Restart it with a plan small enough to keep, convert the useful posts into undated articles, or remove the section and redirect its old addresses.

How often should a small business post?

Often enough that the gap never looks like a stop. Four short posts a year, one each season, is a plan most businesses can actually keep.

Which old posts are worth keeping?

The ones that answer questions customers still ask. Retitle them, check them, and move them to an advice or guides section with the dates no longer shown.

What does removing the section involve?

Taking it out of the menu, deleting the posts and the archive pages the software created, and redirecting each old address to the most relevant remaining page.

Why do ambitious posting plans fail?

Because they set a pace no small business keeps through a busy season. When one stops, the page shows a dated record of exactly when it stopped.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Newest news post from 2016?

Share the page with us. We will say which posts to keep, which to remove, and how to redirect them.

Start a Conversation