Website Maintenance

Website maintenance

Website maintenance is the act of regularly checking your website for issues and mistakes and keeping it updated and relevant. This should be done on a consistent basis in order to keep your website healthy, encourage continued traffic growth, and strengthen your SEO and Google rankings.

Keeping a website well maintained and attractive is important to companies big and small in order to engage and retain customers. It’s easy for businesses, especially startups, to cut corners and let a few tasks slide. Website maintenance can easily become one of those things as it doesn’t always present immediate issues. However, just like your health can fall apart if you go too long without a regular check up, so can the health of your website.

Regular monitoring of your website is a must for keeping your business running smoothly.

A Quick Checklist

There is a laundry list of tasks that should be done to keep your website running smoothly. The most time-sensitive of these are website security updates and patches. Without these, your website has the potential to be an actual danger to those who click on it.

With that in mind, here is a list of website maintenance tasks that should be completed regularly:

To be done weekly

  1. Check that all of your pages are loading without errors
  2. Run a backup and make sure a previous version of your site is stored
  3. Make updates to website software and plugins
  4. Check that all of your forms are running properly
  5. Remove any spam comments from pages and posts
  6. Check your pages to see if there are any broken links
  7. Search for 404 errors and fix or redirect
  8. Write one or more blog posts to keep your community engaged and encourage SEO traffic.

To be done monthly

  1. Check the load speed of your website and ensure that nothing is bogging it down
  2. Review your security scans and make sure nothing is out of place
  3. Analyze website statistics from the previous month
  4. Check your blog to see if there are any articles that could be updated

To be done quarterly

  1. Review your website design and structure  – can be it improved?
  2. Check graphics and images – should anything be updated?
  3. Review SEO and meta titles and descriptions to ensure they are as effective as possible
  4. Test and tweak popups, forms, and calls to action
  5. Review your workload for efficiencies to see if anything can be automated
  6. Test your website on all devices and browsers to see if it displays correctly
  7. Review advertising and marketing campaigns to see if anything needs to be changed or updated.
  8. Restore a previous version of the website to check your backup health

To be done yearly

  1. Update any reference to the current year
  2. Review each page for content accuracy, grammar, typos, and relevancy
  3. Check any active email addresses and see if any are excessive and can be deleted
  4. Ensure that your website domain name is renewed
  5. Consider whether a website design update is due
  6. Review all of your top performing blog articles and see if they can be updated with new content

A Proper Website Maintenance Plan Is a Circle

As you can see from our checklist, website maintenance should be a consistent part of your business. It grows on itself, and if not correctly implemented, can cause some serious problems and setbacks to your potential growth and business health.

Staying on top of website health takes awareness and organization. This is particularly the case for a large site with hundreds (or even thousands) of pages.

With the introduction of new tools to make website building easier, website sizes are growing each year. While it’s easy to add pages to most websites, it’s not as easy to keep all of your pages in a good state.

All that to say: keep on top of your website maintenance.

Paying for Website Maintenance Services: The Advantages

  1. You’ll be hiring a team of experts who take care of these tasks every day. They know what to look for and what to expect.
  2. You can focus on other areas of your business that need your attention.
  3. Hiring an outside agency is cost-effective and can scale with your company. Your package will reflect the needs of your company.

Determining If You Should Buy Website Maintenance Packages

There are several elements that go into determining whether you should purchase a website maintenance package.

  1. The size of your website
  2. The purpose of your website
  3. How much of your website is customized content
  4. How quickly is your business growing?
  5. How much experience do you have with website maintenance?
  6. Is your website currently out-of-date?
  7. How much time do you have to dedicate to website maintenance?

If you’ve read this whole article, you probably have a good idea if maintaining your own website is something you are currently capable of. If your website is simply sitting and taking up space on the internet, you should absolutely consider purchasing a website maintenance package. Your website should be a tool that is supporting and helping your business grow. It is a living and breathing entity that deserves your time and attention in order to fulfill its potential.

Many new businesses already have a lot on their plates without worrying about constantly checking in on their website. It’s tempting to buy a domain name, throw up something temporary, and just worry about it later. There are many reasons why this is not a good idea. Maintaining a current, healthy, and active website is important for a number of reasons.

Why Is It Important to Do Website Maintenance?

  1. SEO
  2. Customer Attraction/Engagement
  3. Security
  4. Corporate Image
  5. Your Sanity
  6. Keep up with Trends in Design and Technology