Every holiday is a great opportunity to dress up your author website—both with content and graphics. There are lots of ways you can refresh the content on your website to keep with a holiday theme.
But, you’re wondering, why should I bother to change up my author website regularly? Isn’t that a waste of time?
Before we offer some tips and pointers to show you HOW to change your website in easy ways, we’re first going to look at the ways a regularly updated website can help you reach your goal of creating a strong author platform.
Regularly updating your author website:
- Conveys that you take your website seriously. That you are on top of things. That you don’t just have a minimal Internet presence (yawn), but a vibrant and alive site that you use to tell your story, build relationships, showcase your creativity, and—dare we hope?—drum up business. Visitors to your website like and appreciate that you are present, active, and involved (and dislike the signs of staleness that show that you aren’t).
- Allows you to demonstrate your creativity, not just in selecting themed colors and graphics, but in your writing—whether it be a simple holiday-oriented greeting or headline, or an entire article or story.
- Indicates to search engines that your website is fresh and up-to-date. This is part of a great SEO strategy. Search engines like to see websites change with the times. Activity on a website indicates that the site isn’t stale and outdated, which could make your site more likely to rank higher in search results.
- Lets you evoke the reaction of your choosing from visitors to your website. Do you want to make them feel warm and fuzzy during the holidays? Grateful on Thanksgiving? Scared at Halloween? It is in your power to make visitors to your site feel something. And isn’t that an awesome power?
Since it’s nearly Halloween, here are a few things you can do to take advantage of the upcoming holiday. But keep in mind that these are just examples for one specific holiday. You can riff on these ideas for other holidays down the line.
- Use orange and black elements to spice up your website. This could be as simple as an orange and black border around the home page or writing a headline in orange text on a black background. Let your time and taste be the guide.
- Use a spooky Halloween-style font on a headline on your home page. But keep in mind that these fonts may not be visible to all viewers. The best way to make sure everyone can see your spooky font is to create a custom graphic. Also, the Google fonts API is a great way to add spooky fonts to your website! Visit this link for more information.
- Add a bit of no-cost Halloween artwork available from any of the myriad of art-sharing sites such as Clker.com. Pick a witch on a broomstick, a jack-o’-lantern, or a friendly or frightening ghost—whatever enhances the theme you are creating.
- Use Halloween-themed language on your site. Halloween brings to mind a host of words that you can scatter throughout your site to further enhance the holiday motif. Pepper your site with adjectives like bloodcurdling, bone-chilling, creepy, eerie, terrifying, spooky, frightful, gruesome, etc.
- Go all-out and post an original Halloween story—or vignette or article, or some Halloween-themed commentary—on your site or blog. Write something so terrifyingly good that visitors can’t help but want to look at everything else on your site!
The Big Picture
Although we’re using Halloween as an example, any widely popular cultural event offers an excellent opportunity for you to interact with your visitors.
Seasons, major sporting events, big moments in television—you can customize your site to show that you and your visitors have connections. And that’s a great way to turn visitors into fans!
Don’t believe us? Just ask the good people at Google, who dedicate resources to occasionally refreshing their iconic homepage with images that capture the vibe of the times. With a little creativity and a good Web team like the staff here at Web Design Relief, you can make the same idea work for your author website!
Photo by AForestFrolic
QUESTION: What is your favorite Halloween icon?
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