One of the questions I get asked most often is “how often should I be updating the site?” — usually six months in, when nothing has obviously gone wrong but they're starting to wonder.
The honest answer: not often, but in small doses. Here's the calendar I'd recommend.
Every month: 10 minutes
Add any new Google reviews. Most do this automatically on the sites I build, so usually nothing to do.
Spot-check the contact form. Send yourself a test message. It takes a minute. Better to find a broken form on a quiet Tuesday than the day a £4,000 job slips through it.
Every three months: 30 minutes
Add 2–3 new job photos. Even just one a month makes the gallery look alive. The photos don't have to be of spectacular finished work — a half-done bathroom, a tricky boiler swap, a roof you re-felted. Real beats glossy.
Update prices if anything's changed. Call-out fees, hourly rates, anything quoted on the site. Customers arriving with the wrong expectation is the most avoidable argument in the trade.
Every six months: 1 hour
Look at your services list. Anything you no longer do? Anything you've started offering?
Check your coverage area. If you've started covering Devizes or stopped covering Trowbridge, the towns page needs to match.
Re-read your About page out loud. It's the page that ages fastest. Numbers go out of date, the story shifts. A small once-a-year refresh keeps it feeling current.
Once a year: an afternoon
Pick a quiet Sunday in January. Sit down with a cup of tea and read the whole site cover to cover, the way a customer would.
You'll spot a service you forgot to add, a town name that's misspelled, a photo that's now four years old, wording that no longer sounds like you.
Make a list. Send it to me. If you're on the £9.99/mo plan, one content change a month is already included — small tweaks like a price, a town, or a photo swap come out of that. For anything bigger, I'll quote it at £25/hr before I start so there are no surprises.
When to call me in straight away
Some things shouldn't wait for the next check-in:
- A registration body changes its rules — needs updating that week, not at year-end.
- A new accreditation or qualification — gets added the day it lands. It's earned credibility, use it.
- A price change you want live immediately — a wording tweak like this is exactly what the included monthly change is for.
- A bad review you want to respond to on-site — you can usually handle the Google reply yourself, but if you want a supporting page added, I'll build it.
What I do automatically
You don't need to worry about: security updates, the hosting itself, the contact form working, mobile compatibility, or any of the technical bits. All covered in the £9.99/month, all happening in the background.
You handle the content. I handle the rest.
Last updated: May 2026 · If anything in this guide is out of date or unclear, drop me an email — I'll fix it. nick@neobookworm.uk
Send me your list and I’ll tell you what fits inside the included monthly change and what I’d quote separately.