What is website maintenance and why is it so important?
Website maintenance is the regular and constant monitoring of your website with the purpose of keeping it away from technical problems, keeping it up-to-date and performing well. This should be done regularly in order to keep your site healthy, encourage continued traffic growth, provide a positive user experience, and strengthen SEO and Google rankings.
Have an up-to-date website
Maintaining an up-to-date, well-functioning website is important for small and large businesses in order to engage and retain customers.
It is clear that a Web site does not always have immediate problems, however just as your health can take a turn for the worse if you go too long without regular monitoring, so too can the health of your Web site.
Regular monitoring of your website is a must to keep your business running smoothly.
What are the steps in website maintenance? A quick checklist
There is a long list of activities that should be done to keep your website running smoothly. Among the most important are website security patch updates. Without these, your site could easily become vulnerable and be attacked by hackers, posing dangers to you and those visiting your site.
Here is a list of website maintenance tasks:
- Verify that all your pages are loading without errors.
- Make and keep a security backup, before each update.
- Make updates to your Web site software and plug-ins.
- Verify that all contact forms are working properly.
- Remove any spam comments from pages and posts.
- Check your pages for broken links.
Check the loading speed of your Web site and make sure nothing is slowing it down.
Review each page for content accuracy, grammar, typos, and relevance.
Test your website on all devices and browsers to see if it displays correctly.
Renew your website’s domain name.
Create or remove, empty or restore backups for email addresses related to your site (e.g., info@nomedominio.it)
Of course, this list is only a part, because it would be impossible to have a complete list. Sometimes unforeseen problems arise that would be impossible to know in advance.
A proper website maintenance plan is a continuing circle
As you can see, website maintenance should be a consistent part of your business. It grows on its own and, if not properly maintained, can cause serious problems for your company’s potential growth.
Staying on top of website health requires awareness and organization, especially for a large site with hundreds (or even thousands) of pages.
As new tools are introduced to simplify website creation, the size is growing every year. Although it is easy to add pages to most sites, it is not as easy to keep all pages in good shape.
What to look for in a freelancer or agency that does maintenance for your website?
Finding the right maintainer for your website is important to the success of your business. You want to make sure you find a credible company that knows what they are doing and has the experience to keep your site healthy and effective.
For your website maintenance, look for a company that:
- Understands your needs
- Provides the services necessary for your site to run at peak performance
- Has experience in website maintenance
- Understands about your industry or target market
- Has a solid reputation and has positive reviews from satisfied customers
- Provides the services they promise in a reliable and timely manner.
Also, watch out for these red flags:
Hidden fees
If you get unexpected fees at the end of the month or year then you need to reconsider your referral company. Discussing additional services in advance and agreeing to pay for them is one thing. Finding out that extra work has been done without notice and receiving an unexpected charge is a bad sign.
No portfolio
Any reputable company should have a portfolio of samples of work done for previous clients. If the vendor you found has nothing to show you to demonstrate its success rate, it is an indicator that it may not have many satisfied customers.
Act as gatekeepers
A Web site maintenance provider should grant you access to the back-end of your site. After all, you should be able to see what changes they have made and how those changes affect your site’s performance. If a provider refuses to grant you access to your site, it is time to change your security settings and find a reputable company that will work with you to improve your Web site.
Get help
I can offer you reliable and affordable website maintenance packages without long-term contracts. I offer SEO, hosting, system and security updates, backups, support, and peace of mind.
Ask yourself honestly if your website is healthy and consider contacting me. If you were to drive a car for miles every day without regular tune-ups, you can’t expect it to run long term, right? Your website is the same. But don’t worry, I know how to have your back.
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