Your business website is the digital epicenter of your business online. It speaks for you when you are sleeping or spending time with family and directs customers where they need to go. It’s a 24/7marketing powerhouse. So, ensuring it is running at its full potential is vital. To illustrate, just like a car needs regular updates and maintenance to perform optimally. So do websites! Then what is website maintenance? What do you need to do to maintain a website? How often? What is the Risk of having an unmaintained website? Where can you get help in maintaining a website?
What Is Involved In Website Maintenance?
There are many items to consider to maintain your website—some items you need to do weekly, monthly, quarterly, and even yearly. A website’s maintenance requires you to check for software and plugin updates, look for issues and errors, and fix any bugs. It is also essential to back up your data, perform a speed test, inspect responsiveness, review web analytics and keep your information current. Finally, and most importantly, make sure everything is secure. All these maintenance requirements must be updated regularly, regardless of your website size. Your website should not be an online billboard or a business card. To boost traffic to your website and turn that traffic into consumers, you must actively and effectively manage it.
Let’s dive a little deeper into six of the maintenance items.
1. Data Backup
A copy of your website must be stored/saved somewhere other than the server it is being hosted. Doing this will help protect it from hackers or power outages that won’t wipe up your website or steal data. Your website’s traffic and the level of data secrecy will determine how frequently you should back it up. The minimum should be weekly. Information with significant importance and confidentiality, like hospital or bank information, should be backed up even more often. Of course, you must have adequate cybersecurity and HIPPA compliance for this data.
2. Software And Plugin Updates
Technology is constantly changing, and there are updates to keep up with to ensure everything is running optimally. These updates can improve performance, usability, accessibility, and functionality. If you don’t update them, hackers may find “cracks” and gain access to your website
3. Fixing Errors And Bugs
Because of the software and plugin upgrades, it is vital to look at how the website responds. For example, a link may be broken, or a form may fail to send. Therefore, examining the website to ensure that everything is operating and uploading properly is critical.
4. Speed Test And Responsiveness
How quickly your website loads and how it responds to different devices may either win or lose a consumer. According to Google, the recommended page load time is under two seconds. “Two Seconds is the threshold for eCommerce website acceptability. At Google, we aim for under a half-second.” So speed is essential, as is how different devices respond to your website. It must efficiently perform and be tailored for all digital platforms. Remember that one unpleasant encounter might turn someone off from becoming a customer. In addition, search engines consider how quickly your website loads as part of their algorithm when ranking businesses for your services or products.
5. Web Analytics
Understanding and analyzing how people find your website and visitors’ behavior is essential. Looking at data that measure web activity and how people respond gives you insight into how you may need to change your website to convert visitors into customers. Web Analytics can also show how you can improve SEO.
6. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) And Update Content
SEO assists search engines in understanding the products or services you provide. For search engines to rank your business, their algorithms consider over 200 items, and your content is one of them. Once you have looked at your web analytics, you can discover what people are looking for and alter the content on your website to meet your target market better. Keeping your content updated and what keywords/phrases people are searching for will also assist search engines in ranking you appropriately because they will better comprehend what you provide to whom.
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What Are The Benefits of Maintaining Your Website
- The most important is to keep your website secure. You never want to leave any low-hanging fruit for hackers.
- The second concern is user experience. If a potential customer arrives at your site and it is not loading correctly, or buttons are malfunctioning. You may lose a customer, which means you are losing money, which leads to business loss and growth.
- And remember the design and appearance of your website. If your website needs to be updated, customers may not feel you have what they need, or it may not look secure. If potential customers feel that way, it may result in losing customers. How your website appears and feels is part of a customer’s journey. It must engage their emotions while providing easy navigation and flow to your website. Your website should clearly state what your company is, what it does, and provides.
- Finally, Google and other search engines consider how effectively you maintain your website and how active it is. They will not direct users to your website if it has old information or is a security concern.
Risk of Unmaintained Website
Risk of Unmaintained Website
- The biggest is security. Remember, hackers will always look for the most vulnerable parts of your website. Â
- Search engines will rank you low, and you will risk losing customers.
- Then there are your customers or potential customers. You want their journey on your website to be flawless and understand clearly who you are and what you do.
- Your website will become outdated.
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Your business will not grow because no traffic is being directed to your website, and customers need to feel safe even if you don’t collect any credit cards or contact information.Â
What Does "Regular" Maintenance Mean
We only discuss six of what is needed for website maintenance. Here is a schedule with many more maintenance items you need to consider, but remember that what it comes down to is if there is an update, you need to update it. The more active you are on your website, the better for SEO and your customers. And Security is #1.
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Weekly:
- Back-up your website
- Check for any broken links
- Remove Spam Comments
- Review key metrics weekly-Google Analytics, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
- Post and share weekly blog articles
- Posting on social media will help with SEO
Monthly:
- For Security and SEO- Check for software and plugin updates. Then always look at your website afterward to ensure everything is working correctly.
- 404 errors and fix broken links or redirecting
- Adding blogs will help you keep your website active and updated. You can do this weekly or once a month-consistency is the key.
- Review security and load speed
- Review your local search visibility
- Test forms
Quarterly:
- Review your content on the whole website to ensure nothing has changed or if new information has come out.
- Review SEO & Meta
- Review Responsiveness
- Web Graphics and photos are up to date
- Review internal strategy, discard old plugins and pictures that no longer serve a purpose
Annual:
- Renew domain name, hosting services, and any additional tool you use for your website.
- Optimize your database
- Update policies
- Update copyright date
- Review how your website aligns with your business goals
- Consider a Redesign
Do I REALLY NEED To DO Maintenance On My Website?
But, you may still be asking yourself, Do I REALLY need to do maintenance on my website?
If you are asking this, then Yes! Especially in these scenarios:
-Your website is five years old or older have old contact information
– can not find your website on Google
– have outdated content information
– is not responsive
– not https://
– never updated any plugins or software
– is slow
– broken links
Are You Overwhelmed?
We know this is a lot to consider, but we are here to help you. If you have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. In addition, we have maintenance packages that help businesses maintain their website so they can worry about other parts of their business.
The articles that this information was taken from:
“The 3 Reasons Why Website Maintenance Is So Important For Your Business With 6 Regular Maintenance Tasks To Perform For Peak Performance?” From Linkedin.com