Having an online presence is vital for any business, and while being on social media is a great way of interacting with your customers, having a website is arguably even more important. There are various reasons for this, such as being able to provide more detailed information on the products and services you offer. However, having a website is not enough. Your website needs to be maintained on a regular basis, otherwise it can quickly become stale, outdated and even vulnerable to cyber threats.
Before we dive headlong into exploring why website maintenance is so important to your business, let’s look at what website maintenance is.
What is website maintenance?
Simply put, website maintenance is what you do to check that your website is in working order and performing well. This will include things such as regularly checking the website for issues and mistakes, as well as keeping the content up-to-date and relevant. It also includes installing any security updates that might be needed and making sure that search engines, and Google in particular, are finding the pages you want them to.
The size of your business and the type of website you have will determine the amount of time you need to invest in website maintenance. If you do not consider it a priority though, it can easily become one of those tasks you keep pushing further down the to-do list.
Some elements of website maintenance need to be done more frequently than others, so having an activity plan can help you stay ahead of the game and ensure it does not build into a huge task. We have provided an example a bit later on in this blog, but in the meantime, let’s explore why the different aspects of website maintenance are important.
So, why is it important?
As varied as the different elements of website maintenance are, the reasons for staying on top of it are relatively simple.
Security
We will start with one of the scarier aspects, just to get it out there. As with everything that is software based, vulnerabilities are constantly being discovered and fixed. If you are not regularly running your security updates, you are leaving your website open to potential risks.
Hackers love to find an exploit websites that have been sitting dormant for a while, as the software updates that are needed to keep the website secure are less likely to have been run, giving them an easier way in.
Company reputation
Which leads us nicely onto the topic of reputation. Even if your site does not become compromised, if the content is outdated, you have broken links or pages just load really slowly, potential customers will likely go elsewhere.
A professional looking website encourages consumer trust. If you want to show your company as both trustworthy and professional, ensuring your website is well maintained is a must.
Customer engagement
Strongly related to the reputation you are seeking to build is the engagement you foster with customers through a well maintained website. When potential customers visit your website, they are more likely to buy if they can find what they are looking for and the information is presented clearly.
Broken links, poor grammar and outdated content will quickly put someone off, while fresh, relevant information will grab their attention and help you get their business.
SEO
Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO for short, is the process of making it easier for Google to crawl the content on your website. As Google does so, they analyse the information on the different pages and then either move your website up or down the search rankings, depending on the quality of their findings.
Pages with error messages or duplicated text are penalised, while well-written and clear pages, especially those that have been optimised for specific keywords, will be promoted.
Tips for staying on top of your website maintenance
Doing you website maintenance only becomes overwhelming if you leave it for too long, so here are a few ways you can break it down, so that it becomes more manageable.
Weekly maintenance tasks
- Run a backup to make sure that a previous version of your website is stored.
- Run any security updates for your website software and plugins.
- Check for any broken links.
- Search for 404 errors and either correct the links or create 301 redirects.
- Create a blog post. This will help keep your content fresh and your customers engaged. Plus it encourages you SEO traffic. (If you do not have the resources to do this on a weekly basis, it can also be moved to the Monthly Maintenance Task list, but the more often you can do it, the more your web rankings will benefit.)
Monthly maintenance tasks
- Test your website’s loading speed to make sure that nothing is slowing it down.
- Analyse your web statistics for the previous month.
- Review your security scans for anything unexpected and fix any issues that are found.
Quarterly maintenance tasks
- Review your website to see whether you can improve it at all. This includes elements such as the images, the layout and the content.
- Do a more thorough review of your SEO plan, including checking the meta titles and meta descriptions for your web pages.
- Test the forms you have on the website, or anywhere there is a “Call To Action”, to ensure they are working correctly.
- Review your marketing and advertising campaigns to see whether anything needs adjusting.
- Test your backup health by restoring the latest version of your backup.
Annual maintenance tasks
- Renew your website domain name and SSL certificate as necessary.
- Check and renew any reference to the current year, for example the copyright date in your footer. (You would be surprised how many people forget this one!)
- Do a thorough review of each page checking that the content is still accurate and up-to-date. Remember to check for grammar and typos as well.
- Consider updating your website design. Over time, things can just start to feel a bit dated.
Oh, and one more thing…
One final thing to consider is that keeping your website up-to-date on a regular basis can also save you money in the long run. If you have let your website maintenance slip for too long it may be easier to start from scratch, rather than going through and doing lots of updates. Often, even if you pay to have your website maintained, it will cost less to do so than redoing your website.
On which note, just a reminder that if you struggle to make your website maintenance a priority we are of course here to help!
As part of our Website Maintenance and Management packages, we perform all the necessary backups and apply any security updates for you, so you don’t need to think about those technical aspects of the maintenance.
We also offer comprehensive services around SEO and can help with any Content needs you may have.
Want to know more? Email hello@zephi.co.uk or call 01889 280010.
