Outdated page refresh

What an outdated page refresh is

An outdated page refresh corrects the facts on a page whose argument is still sound. Dates, years, prices, names, job titles, links that no longer resolve, products you have discontinued, certifications that lapsed, offices you have closed. The page keeps its structure, its wording and its purpose. Only the things that stopped being true are changed.

This is the cheapest job in the repair group, and it is deliberately narrow. It is not a page rewrite, which starts again from what the page is for. It is not a reordering, and it is not an edit for style. If the page argues something you no longer believe, correcting the dates on it is money wasted, and the rewrite is what you want.

It is also not the refresh aimed at a page that has stopped being found. That one looks at what has changed outside your site and rebuilds the page around it. This one only asks what has changed inside your business.

When you need one

You need this when a page embarrasses you rather than fails you. A customer mentions on the phone that the page still lists someone who left two years ago. A supplier's link goes to an error message. The page says “Updated 2022” in the footer and nothing under it has been touched since.

The clearest case is a page read a great deal and changed never. Service pages, the about page, anything listing what is included, anything referring to a programme, grant or regulation that moves. Those pages decay quietly, and the decay is visible to every reader except the people who work there.

You do not need this if one fact has changed and you can change it yourself in the content management system. Do that. Nor do you need it if the page has never produced anything, in which case the question is whether it should exist at all, and a content audit answers that more cheaply.

What gets checked

• Dates and time references. Stated years, “last updated” lines, “new for” claims, and the quiet ones: “over the past decade”, “recently”, “our newest”. Each becomes either a real date or a phrase that does not age.
• Every link. Followed one at a time. Links to your own retired pages, to suppliers who rebuilt their sites, to regulations that moved, and to documents that quietly disappeared.
• Prices and figures. Anything numeric on the page checked against what you charge today, including the ones buried in a sentence rather than sitting in a table.
• People. Names, titles, photographs and pronouns for staff who have left, changed role or changed name, plus the named contact for anything the page tells a reader to do.
• What you sell. Products discontinued, services withdrawn, brands no longer stocked, areas no longer covered, and the memberships, licences and certifications listed at the foot of the page.

What you get

The corrected page. One editable document with every change marked against the original, so you can see at a glance that nothing beyond the facts was touched.

The query list. The things I could not verify without you, each with a specific question. This is short and it is the only part that needs your time. Anything left unanswered is removed from the page rather than guessed at.

The check record. A line per fact: what it says now, what it said before, and the date it was checked. Kept properly, this turns next year's refresh of the same page into an hour of work for one of your own people.

A worked example

An illustration. An Ontario heating and cooling contractor has a page explaining the rebates and grants available on a heat-pump installation. The argument of the page is good and has not changed: get the assessment before you buy, because the paperwork order matters. The facts around it have aged badly. A federal programme named on the page has closed. The rebate figure quoted in the third paragraph has changed twice since it was written. Two links to the utility's application form return errors. The technician named as the person who handles assessments left eighteen months ago, and the footer says the page was updated three years back.

The refresh leaves the argument and the running order alone. The closed programme becomes one sentence saying it closed and what replaced it. The rebate figure is corrected once the contractor confirms it, and carries the date it was checked so the next reader can judge for themselves. The dead links are replaced with the utility's current page. The departed technician becomes the person doing the job now, with the same short description. The footer date is corrected. Fourteen facts, nine of them changed, three working days including the queries. The page reads almost exactly as it did, which is the point.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. Which pages, when they were last touched, and what has changed in the business since. Most owners list four or five things from memory on this call. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Per page or per batch, agreed before anything starts.
3. Access and a contact. The pages, your current price list or rate card, and one person who can answer questions of fact without going to a committee.
4. The checking. Two to three working days for a single page, and a batch of ten over two to three weeks, since the same facts recur across pages and are only checked once.
5. Delivery. The corrected pages, the query list and the check record. Entering the changes is yours to do, or mine as CMS content entry.

What it costs

Quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. The variable is not the length of the page but how much of it is factual. A page of general description carries a handful of checkable facts; a page listing what is included, at what price, by whom, under what certification, carries dozens. Batches are cheaper per page for that reason. The pricing page shows the four ways of working, and the number is fixed in writing before the work starts.

What happens next

Three things usually follow. If the checking showed that the page's argument has aged along with its facts, that is the point to buy the rewrite rather than refresh the same page again next year. If the dead links on one page suggest the rest of the site is in the same state, a sweep for links that no longer resolve is inexpensive and finds them all at once. And if this is the third time a page has been corrected in a hurry, a review schedule costs less than the repeated repairs. None of it is assumed. Correcting a page is a complete piece of work, and a page that is true today is finished.