The Year-End Website & Marketing Refresh Checklist

The end of the year is the perfect time to refresh your marketing, including your website, as you ramp up for the next year. While this is true every year, it’s even more critical now that AI has changed many of the SEO rules (so much so that even larger organizations are struggling to keep up). 

With a better strategy, you won’t be blindsided even as search habits and local customer needs change. Here, we’ll look at how to improve your efforts at the end of the year, and how each item on our checklist impacts your visibility and lead generation. 

Review Your Website Performance & Check SEO Health 

The best place to start is with an accurate assessment of your current digital asset(s). This includes website traffic, search rankings, conversions, and bounce rates. Keep in mind that end-of-year numbers can be tricky to measure because law firms and title companies may see a seasonal boost in business as clients wrap up this year. It’s possible to see a short-term spike in website traffic or low website traffic and high client volume. An end-of-year refresh is as much to improve your visibility now as it is to prepare for drier seasons. 

Keep the following in mind: 

• Mobile responsiveness: From generic, outdated tablets to the latest iPhones, your website should load and scale quickly, giving your clients an easy way to double-check info or conduct research from wherever they are. 

• Plugins/integrations: Contact buttons, calculators, and client sign-in portals are often installed by smaller companies and then either abandoned or forgotten, littering your site with broken or unresponsive tools. Revamping or removing is the only way to avoid frustrating your clients with outdated functionality. 

• New Year Goals: If you want to make big changes by mid-year, like doubling your client volume and adding a new office across town, consider which marketing tools will help you skip the line. For example, if your SEO health is poor, you might invest in paid Google advertisements because they’re the fastest way to get your name and services in front of people who need them. 

Website performance and SEO health may not be the most important marketing channel you have, especially if you have solid name recognition in a small town, but ignoring it in the digital search age comes at your own peril. 

Update Your Design and Branding 

Most people know what it’s like to stumble on a site with photos that look like they were taken in the early 90s or web pages that reference events that happened years ago. These first impressions matter, sending strong signals that your company is neglecting at least one major component of its livelihood. 

To update your branding, prioritize your layout and images, ensuring that all graphics are to scale and easily formatable across all client devices. You may also want to build in more touch-friendly navigation based on your client’s user behavior. For example, if most people immediately bypass your homepage in favor of your testimonial section, you might add a large, touch-friendly button to take them straight to all those glowing reviews. 

Your branding should be clear and concise. Whether you distinguish your law firm by your bulldog attorneys or your title firm by its local, positive rapport with city officials, customers should have an easy way to identify you from your competitors. 

Refresh Website Content 

Content has long plagued smaller companies and, unfortunately, it’s common for marketing departments or managers to create ambitious calendars that start strong and then quickly wither away. This may happen for any number of reasons, but it’s usually some combination of limited resources and a seemingly poor return on investment. 

It’s worth remembering that if you’re going to play the content game, forgoing paid ads that shoot your company straight to the top, you have to be prepared for the long game. Starting and stalling efforts is usually the best way to waste time and money with disappointingly small (sometimes nonexistent) returns. 

At TitleTap, we have an AI Content Generator that can make it easier to get ideas for blogs, service pages, and FAQs. While these content generators can’t replace human ingenuity, particularly when your competitors are likely to rely on the same tools, it can streamline the process and alleviate some of the resource constraints you face. 

Plus, a content generator is a simple way to give your content more direction, establishing core themes that unify your messaging even when you want to break into a new field (e.g., a commercial real estate law firm segueing into residential law). 

Evaluate Your Marketing Channels 

Your marketing channels should include every touchpoint you have with the customer: 

• Traditional media: From radio to TV to print, your end-of-year efforts should measure the effectiveness of each campaign, so you’re not wasting time reaching out to people who never hear your messaging. 

• Social media: This includes standard sites as well as general reputation sites across different platforms. When title companies and law firms have to be deeply attuned to local matters to stay in business, it matters how your neighbors discuss you on anything from NextDoor to Reddit. 

• Email: Newsletters, promotional specials, and new service additions can all be incredibly valuable to your email subscribers, but they’re also easily distracted by their already oversaturated inbox. If you’re not getting a lot of traction from your emails, you may need to either cull the messaging or reevaluate your lists. 

• Text: The open rates for text messages are almost too good to be true, with estimates as close to 98%. If you’re getting more STOP replies than you are conversions, though, it’s a sign that your clients and prospective clients aren’t deriving value from your texts. 

• Word-of-mouth: Whether it’s realtors or former clients, old-fashioned word-of-mouth will always be one of your most reliable marketing tools. As long as you’re making the effort, whether it’s a prompt response to a lead request or fair negotiation with an angry client, your company’s reputation will begin to precede you. 

Collect and Showcase New Reviews 

If your latest review is from 2024, it’s easy for clients to get suspicious. Customer experience can fluctuate fairly widely on a day-to-day basis, let alone year-to-year. Collecting and showcasing your reviews is the best way to tell clients that you’re not only active in your industry, assuring them that you’re on the cutting-edge of all the latest laws and trends, but that you’re able to handle complicated cases with aplomb. 

In 2026, you can also consider letting the stories behind the reviews fuel your next marketing efforts. For example, if your website largely focuses on securing residential titles but all your reviews are for larger commercial buildings, you might either focus your efforts on getting more reviews from homeowners or redoing your website to concentrate more on commercial expertise. Ideally, there should be a mirroring impact in your reviews based on your most profitable services: your website, emails, social media pages, testimonials, etc. discuss what you do best, so clients get concrete reasons why they should contact you instead of your nearest competitor. 

Set Your Business Up for Success 

Between holiday plans and the end-of-year rush, a refresh checklist may not be convenient for most title companies or law firms. Unless you hit a serious lull at this time, which is unlikely, it’s going to be a tough balancing act. However, it’s also the best way to set yourself up for next year, so that you don’t get lost in competition if business slows down. 

If you’re looking for a little help, TitleTap provides a range of marketing services, from template to turnkey. Whether you want to start small and scale or jump right into ambitious 2026 goals, we offer everything from content writing to paid ads to plug-ins that make it easier for your customers to navigate and understand your services. Plus, we monitor it all, so that you won’t fall behind — even if 2026 holds some very unexpected surprises. 

If you want to see how we tackle and conquer digital marketing challenges in your industry, schedule a demo today!