In the previous article on writing for the web we discussed the process of getting started and writing your web content. Now we will discuss how to set up a content maintenance plan that ensures that your content is fresh, accurate and up-to-date.

Google favours fresh content, which means you need to ensure that your content is updated regularly. It's important to remember that things change. Which means your content is unlikely to stay fresh and relevant for long. Regular scheduled 'check-ups' will allow you to add, improve, fix or remove content.

A maintenance plan is as important as a content strategy, without it, your website's content can be very easily forgotten once it's out there. The maintenance plan should outline how your team will keep the content accurate at all times and how to make sure your company's branding and messaging stay on track. It details who's responsible for the content, when updates need to take place and the guidelines to follow when making the changes.

Your maintenance plan should include the following:

• Making sure your information is accurate and consistent
• All links, menu items and any other navigation items are working
• Making sure your brand message is still on-point
• Updating metadata
• Archiving or reorganising old content
• Removing old and out-dated content

When you have well planned and enforceable rules for your content maintenance strategy you will find the process a lot easier. Once you've established a working maintenance plan, then you can focus on who is going to provide your content and when, which you can slot into your publishing schedule.

Note: when updating content consider the size of the update carefully. Too little of an update will make little to no difference, while too large of an update means you have less to update with when that content goes stale again.

Content strategy typically has five unique roles, each of which is essential to the entire process, especially to the maintenance process.

Web editor-in-chief:
The web editor-in-chief oversees the entire content process, while enforcing all the web content policies, standards and guidelines as well as facilitating communication between the writers, editors and other business units connected to the project.

Web Editor:
The web editor plans and organises the on-going management of a website and the publication of the content. For example: planning new content, maintain existing content quality, consistency and relevance to your website.

The web writer:
The web writer writes the actual content. He or she can be in-house, a freelancer or from a digital agency. However, keep in mind that these writers are associated with your company and thus must produce content that is in line with the style and brand of your organisation. The writer may also be responsible for the metadata such as keywords and short descriptions.

The SEO strategist:
The SEO or search engine optimisation strategist analyses your website's business objectives, content and target audience to develop SEO strategies that will result in top search engine rankings. The SEO strategist will usually work closely with the editorial team to make sure important keywords are used in the site content. SEO techniques are always changing as the search engine algorithms evolve, so a lot of the SEO strategist's job involves constant research, reading and self-study.

The reviewers and approvers:
The reviewers and approvers are the experts in their particular fields. They provide insight into the information on the website as well as check its accuracy. They will usually collaborate early on with the editorial team in the beginning and then later read over and approve the finished product.

The content maintenance process
Once each person's role in the maintenance planning is clearly defined, the content creation can begin. This will work according to the publishing schedule and in accordance with your content strategy. Once you have published the content, it can either be archived according to date or subject, or it may need to be deleted.

You might think deleting an article is an easy process; simply 'click delete'. But you need to consider, how many pages link to the one you want to delete, how many people have bookmarked it and do you need to set up a page redirect? This would be necessary if, for instance, the information in the article is no longer relevant.

If you have a large website with a lot of content, chances are you will have a few pages linking to the one you want to delete. You will then have to go to each page and unlink the deleted page; otherwise your site will have a lot of broken links that is bad news for SEO.

If visitors bookmarked the page to be deleted or if it was referred to in previous print articles then you could use a redirect. A redirect is something that the developers could put together that will automatically send users to a different page when the link is requested.

Pro tip: Add a revised and updated line to your content which indicates the exact date that the subject content was updated or, well, revised. This is also highly important for SEO practices as Google gives preference to fresh content, and actually picks up on the revised and updated function

The final part of a maintenance plan is scheduling in time to go over your content again. Consult your organisation's business calendar and highlight important dates that require accompanying content. For example: events like new product or service launches, holidays, promotional campaigns and so on. On all of these occasions your existing content may need to be updated or removed. New articles might need to be written and added or news updates and small notices included.

Ensure that each piece of content has an owner. The owner acts as the person responsible for that content, and must manage the updates and maintenance of that piece of content according to the publishing schedule and content maintenance plan.

In the next article we will discuss ways to repurpose your content in order to get the absolute most out of your content strategy and accompanying content.

Previous article in the series: Writing for the Web; Next article in the series: Repurposing Content

Got any tips for content maintenance? Share with me here or @JulianKarstel

This article was inspired by the book Content Strategy for the web by Kristina Halvorson, 2010.

Julian Karstel is a Digital Marketing Consultant for Sound Idea Digital | @JulianKarstel |Julian@soundidea.co.za | Sound Idea Digital is a full service digital agency | www.soundidea.co.za

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