How Often to Update Your Website (Most of It, Never)

Published September 24, 2026 · Curbside Websites

How often should a small business update its website?

Update it the day a fact about your business changes. Otherwise, give it a 15-minute look every 90 days and leave the rest alone.

There is a whole industry built on making you feel behind. Your site is two years old, so it must be "dated." Nonsense. A clean, fast, clear site for a roofing company works just as well in year four as it did in week one, as long as the information on it is true.

The real risk is not an old design. It is a wrong phone number. I have seen a plumber wrap a new truck with a new number and forget the website for five months. Every call from Google went to a disconnected line. That is what stale actually costs you.

So sort your site into four piles.

What should you update the same day it changes?

Anything a customer could act on and get burned by. If it is wrong, someone wastes a phone call or you waste a trip.

• Phone number, email, and form destination. Including on your Google Business Profile and any directory listing.
• Service area. Dropped a town because the drive is too far? Take it off. Added one? Put it up.
• Services you offer or stopped offering. If you quit doing drain cleaning, pull the page. Nothing burns goodwill like calling about a service you no longer provide.
• Hours, emergency availability, and holiday closures.
• Prices, if you publish them. A stale price is worse than no price.
• License, insurance, and certification numbers.
• Anything seasonal with a hard stop. "Booking fall cleanups now" sitting on a landscaper's homepage in March makes you look closed.

None of this takes more than a few minutes. It just needs to actually happen. Pick the moment: the day you change it in real life, you change it on the site.

What should you check every 90 days?

Four times a year, set a timer for 15 minutes and go down this list. This is the whole maintenance routine for most trades.

1. Test your own contact form. Fill it out from your phone. Did the email land? Did it land in spam? Do this every single time. Silent forms are the number one leak I find.
2. Call your own number from the site. Tap it on mobile. Make sure it rings the right phone.
3. Swap in new photos. You took job photos this quarter. Put three good ones up. Real work beats stock every time.
4. Refresh reviews. Pull your two or three best recent Google reviews onto the homepage.
5. Fix the seasonal line. One sentence near the top: what you are booking now, and roughly how far out you are. A landscaper who is booked through July should say so. It filters out the wrong calls and signals demand at the same time.

What is worth updating once a year?

Once a year, read your site like a stranger would. Ask whether it still describes the business you actually run.

• Are the service pages still in the order of what you want most? If you have drifted from residential repairs to commercial installs, your site should have drifted too.
• Is the About section still accurate about crew size, years in business, and the trucks you run?
• Are the prices or ranges still what you charge?
• Do the service area pages match where you actually want to drive?

That is it. An annual read-through, not a rebuild.

Does Google reward a frequently updated website?

Not in the way people think. Google looks for freshness on things that genuinely change, like news and prices. A page about water heater replacement in your town does not get better because you edited a comma in it last Tuesday.

What does move the needle for local visibility:

• New Google reviews coming in steadily
• Posts and fresh photos on your Google Business Profile
• Pages that actually exist for the services and towns you want (adding a real page is an update worth making)
• A site that loads fast and works on a phone

If you want to update your business website for SEO reasons, add a page that answers a question customers ask you on the phone. Do not rewrite the homepage for the fourth time.

Should you blog to keep the site fresh?

Only if you will answer real questions. "5 Tips for Spring HVAC" written by nobody, for nobody, does nothing.

A post that answers "why does my breaker trip when I run the dryer" or "what does it cost to replace a sump pump in a finished basement" can bring in calls for years. One good one a month beats four filler ones. Zero beats four filler ones, honestly. Skip blogging entirely if you will not do it well. It is optional.

When is it actually time for a redesign?

Redesign on triggers, not on birthdays. Real triggers:

• The site is slow or awkward on a phone
• The contact form is broken or going nowhere
• The business changed (new name, new services, new market)
• You cannot edit your own hours without emailing somebody
• It was built on something that no longer gets security updates
• You are embarrassed to text the link to a customer

That last one is a legitimate test. Text your own site to a friend. If you flinch, fix it. If you do not, leave it alone and go do the 15-minute quarterly check instead.

The honest summary

Facts change same-day. A short check every quarter. A read-through once a year. Rebuild only when something is actually wrong.

Most small business owners are not behind because their site looks old. They are behind because their form has been broken since spring and nobody tested it. Go test yours right now. It takes two minutes, and it is the highest-value website update you will make this year.

Common Questions

Does an old website hurt my Google ranking?

Age by itself does not hurt you. What hurts is a slow site, a site that breaks on phones, or inaccurate information that conflicts with your Google Business Profile. A five-year-old site that is fast and accurate can outrank a brand new one.

How often should I add new pages to my website?

Add a page when you have a real reason: a new service, a new town you want work in, or a question customers keep asking. That might be four pages one year and none the next. Adding pages on a schedule just to add them creates thin content nobody reads.

Do I need to update the copyright year in my footer?

It does not affect rankings, and most visitors never look. That said, an outdated year can make a sharp-eyed customer wonder if you are still in business, so it is worth a ten-second fix or a setting that updates it automatically.

Should I pay a monthly fee just for website updates?

Only if you actually want someone else handling it. If your updates amount to a few text changes and some photos a year, and you can log in and do them yourself, you do not need to pay for that. Paying makes sense when the fee also covers hosting, security, backups, and someone who answers when something breaks.

How quickly should I update my site after changing my phone number?

Same day, along with your Google Business Profile, your truck lettering plan, and any directory listings. A wrong number on a site that ranks well can quietly cost you every call for months before you notice.