Website Maintenance Complete Guide
Everything in life needs to be maintained, whether it is your health or your car then why not your website?
Website maintenance is regular checkups of your website, to ensure that it runs efficiently for a longer time. Website maintenance is not a day process, it’s a continuous process as in this dynamic world, the going concern concept in only feasible when you keep checking on it.
Website maintenance is crucial to drive traffic and revenue from a website, in other words, your website provides you with business and if you don’t keep it healthy your business can incur great loss because of it in the future. For website maintenance services, it’s always recommended to hire a Website Maintenance Service as for you it may take longer and not provide better results, but for a service provider it’s a piece of cake and he can get you better results too. As I said it’s a continuous process, something should be taken care of or checkup on a weekly basis, while some monthly, quarterly and yearly.
So, when to check what? And how?
Well, here is a checklist that will help you keep your website maintenance up-to-date!
Weekly Website Maintenance Services
- Back-Ups
Make sure your website is backing up on a weekly basis so that in case of any breakdown or anything, you don’t lose important data from your website. Also, always backup or save your website offsite, or on another server too. - Broken Links
Review links on a weekly basis and check all the redirection that are going to internal links as well as external. Broken links can affect on On-Page SEO rankings. You can check for broken links through link crawlers and make sure all your links are working. - Website Loading Time
Nobody wants to wait, whether it is Google or your Target audience if your page takes more than 2-3 seconds to load than it’s a major possibility that you will lose the audience’s interest and they will hit the back button. Use Google Page Speed Insights and make sure your website loads on time, and you score a perfect 100! - Updates:
Whatever software your company’s website relies on, whether it be PHP or CMS, it should be updated regularly to ensure safety. But always make sure you have a full backup of your website before any updations. - Forms Submissions
Review your lead generation forms for errors, destination, spam submissions or user accounts. Make sure they are working efficiently and are generating information properly. - Spam Comments
Check and review your blogs and website for any spam comments and remove them on a weekly basis. - Errors
There should be no 404 errors, they look very annoying to everyone, even to Google. Make sure all your pages are working and do not have any errors. If there is any error fix them. You can use Google Webmaster Tools to check for errors on your website. - Content
People want fresh content, which is more engaging. So, try posting a blog with unique content every week, and share it on all your networks. Content includes blogs, images etc, make your site more up-to-date with good quality content with good links.
Monthly Website Maintenance Services
- Security
Website maintenance mostly means security of your website from viruses or hackers. So, always remember to do a monthly scan of your website’s security and resolve any issues, if there are any. - Analytics or Statistics
There is no defined way of success in digital marketing, it’s all trial and error. As you don’t know what might work for your company. That’s why reviewing website statistics like how and when people got there, how many, what did they do and did they convert into clients or not. Everything is important to analyze and improve your results, and ensure better conversion rates. You can use the Google Analytics dashboard and review these every month. - Loading Speed
Make sure your website loads on time with all the images and content, as a prompt website is what surfers like. You can do this by making sure your multimedia is optimized and your website is responsive. This is one of the ranking factors of SEO, so it would be like 2 birds from one stone.Know more about Website Speed Optimization. - Marketing
Keep checking up your email list, and send them updates on a monthly basis, you can send them updates more regularly depending on the type of your company, but don’t overdo it, as it can make you look like spam mailers.
Quarterly Website Maintenance Services
- Review Website
Make it a habit to quarterly review your website, about what improvements and changes can you bring, and how they would help your website in the long run. It might be Website design improvements or Keywords or anything.
- Meta Tags
Check and change your Meta title and meta descriptions in every few months, This will help you in improving your On-page SEO rankings and also you can change your keywords according to new reports, or after analyses of before ones.
- Conversion Rate
You can test and analyze your forms and automated messages to make sure what works better for your company and use that to improve your conversion rates over time. - Responsive Website
Your website should change its layout and display according to the devices and browsers, as a more responsive website ensure better chances of SEO rankings and also if your website doesn’t adjust accordingly than there is a big possibility that the user might push the back button and increase your bounce rate. - Website Advertising Campaigns
If you are running any advertising campaigns for your website, you need to review and analyze the campaigns after getting your quarterly reports about the same, so you can measure the results and plan accordingly. - Backup
Always backup your website, whether it be before updates or just on a regular basis, and do a normal as well as an off-site backup on a different server. - Website Content, Graphics, And Photos
Make sure the content whether it be blogs, photos or any graphics, it should not be outdated, keep on changing them accordingly to new trends and post fresh, unique content. - Automation
Try to convert your regular tasks into automation, if possible. These regular checkups are time-consuming, so try to get them automated and invest your time in more important tasks.
Yearly Website Maintenance Services
- Copyright Date
Update your copyright date on your website as well as other references, on a yearly basis so you won’t forget it. - Review Content
Review your content for accuracy and relevance, make sure if you have any facts, or there are any new updates on the topics that your content is on, and try to indulge them and stay updated. - Review website domain and Strategy
Review your website domain names and also check whether you achieved your prior business goals with context to your website or not. Also, make your website strategy on the basis of your business goals, alter your website accordingly. - Website Design
Update and change your website design, why stay on one, when you can ask your Web Developer and get a new look or new strategy for your website, updating your website design helps in engaging more audience and also keeps your website fresh, which passes a good image in front of customers.
Your website is your asset, and you should keep on updating and maintaining that asset for future opportunities and uncertainties. Website maintenance is crucial and should be done on a regular basis.
If you’re a businessman and don’t know anything about websites than you probably shouldn’t try your hands on website maintenance because it’s easier to maintain them then fix them later. Get yourself a Website Maintenance & Support Expert. Contact us @ Email: info@digitalwebsitedevelopment.com