How To Keep Your Website Relevant
1) Keep on top of internet regulations
The regulation that governs websites is constantly evolving. The past few years have already seen web users in the European Union (EU) being given the ‘right to be forgotten’, but the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), due to come into force in May 2018, will provide even stricter rules.
The GDPR is set to give web users unprecedented control over their personal data, and it calls for data protection to be designed into businesses’ processes. Collecting data such as names and IP addresses will be subject to strict codes.
2) Make sure your web development tools are up to date
PHP – the programming language designed for web development – is now in its seventh iteration, but the majority of websites still use PHP 5. Yet versions prior to PHP 5.6 are no longer supported with security fixes, and PHP 5.6 will cease to be supported in December 2018.
As a matter of security, as well as to take advantage of bug fixes and new tools, it’s essential to migrate to the latest version of PHP.
3) Constantly update your website for SEO
Google makes around 500 to 600 changes to its search algorithms every year. One of the biggest changes in recent years was the introduction of Google RankBrain in 2015. RankBrain is a machine-learning algorithm – essentially a kind of artificial intelligence – that learns from users’ searches and changes page rankings accordingly.
