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Many people believe that website builds are one-and-done projects. The reality is that building a website is only half the battle – it needs to be properly maintained to ensure it works day after day.
Think of a website as a restaurant.
To keep customers coming back, you need to clean the place regularly, update the menu, make sure the chairs aren’t broken, and a million other little tasks. The same logic applies to running a website.
The importance of website maintenance isn’t always flashy, but it’s crucial to both attract and retain visitors.
In this post, we’re going to discuss six commonly overlooked maintenance tasks to keep a website in good working order. Many website maintenance services cover these tasks, and we want to explain why they are so important.
Website trends evolve by the second. Staying in tune with how the internet changes involves consistently updating site plugins and themes.
The good news is this is the easiest task on our list of website maintenance services.
Regular plugin/theme updates are essential for your website’s functionality, security, and user experience. Failing to perform these updates can leave your website vulnerable to a few different risks.
For one, you’d be surprised how quickly websites can earn the dreaded “outdated” label. Staying on top of theme updates is essential to avoid this. Second, as websites age, there may be compatibility issues with certain browsers or devices. Regular updates will make sure you don’t run into these issues.
Lastly, and most importantly, online security threats are constantly evolving – and plugins release updates to stay vigilant. By updating plugins, you’re keeping your site secure and your visitors safe from hacking attempts.
How often should you perform this task? Weekly.
Plugin and theme updates are common items in web development services and routine maintenance.
Malware is a cyber-threat that’s not going away any time soon. The best we can do as webmasters is stay one step ahead. Neglecting malware scans opens the door for hackers to steal customer information (like credit card numbers) – or even take complete control over your website.
From an SEO standpoint, malware hacks do not look good for a website. It may even result in getting blacklisted by search engine algorithms, making it impossible for people to find you via Google search.
Most importantly, you may ruin the sense of trust between you and your customers – which can be a death sentence for a small business.
Malware is relatively rare on a website. But the harsh truth is many business owners don’t even think about it until after something terrible happens. The best thing website owners can do is conduct regular scans to spot risk factors before disaster can strike.
How often should you perform this task? Weekly.
Malware scans aren’t difficult to conduct. The issue is many business owners don’t know what they are looking for – or what the proper fix would be. If you’re not completely certain of how to run a malware scan, we recommend turning to a professional website maintenance services company.
Speaking of website security and potential disasters, regular site backups are a great insurance plan.
There are a million different things that can compromise a website – from hackers and malware to server malfunctions or something as simple as human error. Site backups are the difference between a full-scale meltdown and a minor inconvenience.
Site backups only take a few minutes. If an incident occurs, you can immediately reinstate your website with minimal business disruptions. For WordPress sites, there are plenty of plugins to perform backups.
How often should you perform this task? Weekly.
Website backups should be included in a professional web maintenance plan.
Google uses a ranking algorithm to determine where websites appear on the search engine results pages – and the details of this algorithm are famously secretive.
Just like web design trends, SEO trends are constantly changing. The purpose of an audit is to make sure you’re staying up to date with the changes and attracting good web traffic. This involves gauging:
The audit report will help you understand your website’s strengths and weaknesses – and what needs to be done to improve results. Based on these findings, you can either implement the changes yourself or have an SEO specialist do it for you.
There are plenty of free tools out there for SEO audits.
How often should you perform this task? Monthly.
Now, if your website was originally built with proper website SEO structuring, audits will be a lot easier – and most website tweaks should be minor. SEO is a big piece of the website maintenance puzzle.
If you’re not well-versed in the topic, we strongly recommend working with a professional. Any mistakes could seriously compromise your site’s rankings on search engines. Some web agencies include SEO audits in their website maintenance packages.
Broken links – or bad links – refer to the links on your website that lead to nowhere. If you’ve ever been met with a 404 error on a webpage, broken links are the culprit.
Both humans and Google’s bots love seamless websites – and broken links create kinks in the user experience. Google’s search engine algorithms see these links as an indication that a website is not being taken care of.
As the main objective of these algorithms is to provide users with the best and most reliable websites, broken links can hurt your rankings.
The good news is this is a super easy fix.
You can use Dead Link Checker to identify your bad links. With this report, you can go into the website’s backend and fix the URL or delete it entirely.
How often should you perform this task? Monthly.
A good web development agency will include this in their website maintenance plans.
We expect web pages to load immediately – and every extra second of loading time compromises your conversion rates. Studies have proven this year after year.
Webmasters need to monitor website loading speeds regularly. Otherwise, you could be leaving conversions (and money) on the table. In terms of SEO, site speed is one of Google’s ranking factors. Slow-loading webpages indicate a website doesn’t prioritize the website’s performance and user experience – and can wreak havoc on search rankings.
There are a million potential culprits for a slow-loading webpage, including:
The list goes on.
The good news is you can get answers pretty easily. PageSpeed Insights is a free website software that allows you to run your web pages through a checker to identify the issues – with suggestions to fix them.
How often should you perform this task? Monthly.
Monitoring loading speeds is a core ingredient in most website maintenance service plans. Talk to your web agency to learn more about it.
The most successful businesses understand the importance of website maintenance – and make sure they don’t miss any of the crucial tasks.
Just like the standards of fashion, website standards are subjected to constant changes. Proper maintenance is how you keep up with these changes. Fortunately, you can turn these tasks over to website professionals for relatively cheap. When you hire a professional agency to provide website maintenance services on a retainer, they will manage all these tasks in the backend. You won’t even have to think about it. At Wildish Agency, we offer custom website maintenance plans to make sure all your bases stay covered – no matter how your website evolves. Get in touch with us today to learn more about our web maintenance services.