The hidden costs of not having a website maintenance plan can be significant. Just like you need to go for regular health screenings to maintain your health, you also need to maintain your website regularly to keep it functioning well and looking good, and on-trend. Without a website maintenance plan, your website can quickly fall apart, leading to delayed business, lost customers, and revenue.
What is Website Maintenance?
Website maintenance is the practice of doing periodic checks on a website. The aim is to keep it current, up to date, and free of errors. Website maintenance isn’t a once-and-done sort of thing; instead, it must be done daily. Maintaining a healthy website can help boost traffic and SEO rankings.
Why is Website Maintenance Important?
First, it helps to ensure that your site is always up and running. Secondly, it can help improve your site’s search engine rankings because it lets search engines like Google know your website is constantly being updated. Third, it helps you keep your site’s content fresh and relevant. Finally, website maintenance can help prevent security breaches.
The Most Popular CMS & Its Website Maintenance Needs
WordPress Maintenance: WordPress is the most popular CMS on the internet, making it an attractive target for hackers. So it’s so important to keep your WordPress website’s upgrades secure, maintain backups, keep the site under surveillance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and more.
What Does Website Maintenance Include?
Some of the most common website maintenance tasks include:
- Updating website content
- Fixing broken or bad links: A resource that has been linked to previously may go missing. Always be mindful of broken links, as they can make visitors believe your site is untrustworthy, outdated, and unhelpful.
- Checking site security: This is essential, as even the most secure website can be hacked.
- Performing software updates: Regularly updated software helps to keep your site running smoothly and protect it against security threats.
- Backing up your site daily: Always create backups of your site so you have a copy in case something goes wrong. You never want to lose important blog posts, photos, plugin settings, form data, website pages, etc.
- Monitoring website traffic and analytics: This helps you understand how visitors are using your site and what areas may need improvement.
- Making sure page layouts and designs are consistent: When browsers like Chrome, Firefox, or Safari update their platforms, they could mess up how your website is displayed on their browsers, which can have a detrimental influence on your business and branding. To prevent inconsistent web designs, it’s so important to subscribe to a regular website maintenance plan.
- Updating Plugins: Hackers frequently exploit outdated plugins to break into websites. The majority of plugins include an auto-update function, but it is advised that website owners check for compatibility themselves and update them manually to ensure everything is in good working order.
- Form Checking: When you schedule updates, review your site’s online forms to ensure that they are functioning correctly, such as verifying that submitted forms are in the proper formats.
Website Maintenance is Not Difficult
Maintaining a website may seem daunting, but it’s not difficult if you hire a professional. They will take care of all the technical aspects of website maintenance for you so that you can focus on running your business.
Contact us today for website maintenance plans.
