No matter how big or small your website is, it’s important to keep it maintained.
Website maintenance includes tasks like checking traffic, updating software, and troubleshooting issues. You may be putting your website and, more importantly, your business at risk if you don’t maintain it.
In this blog post, we’ll talk about what website maintenance is. We’ll also talk about why it’s important and some tips on how to keep your website running smoothly.
- What is Website Maintenance?
- Maintenance Tasks for a Website
- Why is Website Maintenance Important?
- How Often Should You Do Website Maintenance?
- How Long Does Website Maintenance Take?
- Website Maintenance Tips
What is Website Maintenance?
Website maintenance is the process of keeping your website healthy.
This includes regularly updating your website’s content, fixing broken links and images, tracking site analytics, and more.
Maintaining a website can be tedious, but it’s important to do in order to ensure that your site is performing well and attracting new visitors.
Maintenance Tasks for a Website
Website maintenance tasks can be split into three different parts.
- Technical: things that you can do to fix the website if it is not working right.
- Content: content needs changes or updates on the website.
- Marketing: activities to help bring people onto your site.
Technical Website Maintenance
If you’re not tech-savvy, then this might seem like a foreign language. But we assure you your website maintenance isn’t as complicated as it sounds.
Technical website maintenance is all about checking website issues and troubleshooting any problems.
This includes tasks like:
- Website Backups: Check that your website backups are taking place on time and if they have all the website files you need.
- Website Speed: Check that your website is loading quickly for your visitors.
- Software Updates: Make sure any software plugins, themes, or other website updates are current.
- Website Uptime: Make use of website monitoring tools to alert you of any potential problems.
- Security: Take security precautions to protect your website, including updating passwords.
- Browser Compatibility Testing: Test website layout and functionality on different browsers, including older browsers.
- Broken Links: Ensure no broken links are on the website by checking for any and all broken links.
Content Website Maintenance
Content website maintenance is all about keeping the content on your website up-to-date.
This includes content management tasks such as:
- Updating website content with new information such as copy, images, etc.
- Reviewing website copy for spelling and grammatical errors
- Publishing blog posts regularly
- Adding or removing pages
- Modifying the website’s layout or design
- Monitoring website comments and feedback
Marketing Website Maintenance
Marketing website maintenance is about promoting your products and services on the website.
This includes tasks such as:
- Creating and sharing content that encourages website traffic.
- Optimising website copy for SEO purposes
- Monitoring website performance using website analytics tools
- Managing website ads, email newsletters, and other marketing efforts
Why is Website Maintenance Important?
Well for starters, website maintenance could cost you money when left unchecked.
Don’t ignore your website for for too long as it will result in a build-up of issues and problems.
If these things go wrong, you may need to spend a lot of money to fix them. And if your website isn’t performing well online, then you will lose potential customers.
Keep in mind that a website’s primary purpose is to help visitors convert. The following are some of the reasons why website maintenance is key for website success:
Customer Experience
First impressions are everything!
Website visitors will judge your business within seconds of arriving on your website.
You’re going to lose customers if your website:
- Looks outdated & terrible
- is slow to load
- has spelling errors
- is difficult to navigate
You want to keep visitors on your site and encourage them to become customers. You can do this by having a website that loads fast, publishing fresh content, and keeping it up-to-date.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
This involves optimising a website or webpage for search engine results pages (SERP) to improve its visibility.
You will have more website visitors by having high rankings on the SERP.
Maintaining a website’s SEO is an ongoing process. This should be regularly checked and tweaked as needed.
To rank well in the SERP, website owners must use a variety of SEO tactics, including content updates for:
- optimising website copy with relevant keywords
- building backlinks
- improving website speed
Security
Website security is critical for any website. Not applying website security updates can put your website and its data at risk.
Regular website maintenance is an excellent initiative-taking approach and will help to ensure that your website is as safe as possible.
These include tasks such as:
- updating your website’s software to reduce the chances of a security breach.
- monitoring website traffic analytics to show any suspicious activity before it causes damage.
Brand Image / Reputation / Credibility
Website maintenance also helps to protect the brand image of your business.
A website that has fresh content and is free of errors sends a positive message to visitors. It tells them that you care about your visitors, website, and brand. Helping to further improve the overall customer experience.
This increases the credibility and trust of your website. It may result in more visitors and customers to your website.
How Often Should You Do Website Maintenance?
While it is important to perform regular maintenance. You should create a website maintenance schedule that works for you. How regularly you can perform your maintenance all depends on the size and complexity of your website.
Generally speaking, scheduling website maintenance tasks weekly could be a good starting point. You can always adjust the schedule as needed.
How Long Does Website Maintenance Take?
As mentioned above, the time needed will also depend on your website. The size and complexity of your website will influence the process.
For smaller websites, website maintenance tasks can be completed in a few hours per week. But for larger or more complex websites, some planning is required to limit and potential downtime as the tasks may require testing and could take days or even weeks to complete.
It’s worth noting that you should schedule website software maintenance during off-peak hours. This is to prevent disrupting website visitors or affecting website performance.
Website Maintenance Tips
Now that you know the importance of website maintenance, it’s time to put it into practice. Here are tips on how to keep your website running smoothly:
- Make a website maintenance schedule and try to stick to it!
- Make sure you have regular backups in place and that they are functioning. This will allow you to quickly restore your website in the event of a problem.
- Back up your website regularly, especially before performing software updates.
- Always assess website updates before launching them.
- Schedule website software updates during off-peak hours
- Use a checklist to make sure you don’t forget any important website maintenance tasks.
- Check website analytics often. You’ll learn how your visitors are finding your website, which pages they visit the most, and so on.
Conclusion: Every Website Needs Maintenance
You may feel like there’s no need to worry about maintenance when you have a small website.
The reality is that it doesn’t matter how small or big your site is. Neglecting your website maintenance can put you and your business at risk.
Routine maintenance can help you to improve your website’s:
- functionality
- user experience
- performance
- security
- search engine optimisation efforts.
We hope this blog post has given you helpful tips for ongoing website maintenance. These tasks are important for all websites, regardless of size or traffic volume.
Recap
- Website maintenance is the process of keeping your website healthy and includes a variety of tasks, such as checking traffic, updating software, troubleshooting issues, and more.
- Website maintenance can be broken into technical, content, and marketing tasks.
- Website maintenance helps ensure visitors have a positive experience on the website and provides a boost in search engine rankings.
- It is also important because inadequate maintenance can cause a build-up of problems which can cost money to fix.
- Website maintenance should be done regularly – how often depends on the size and complexity of your website – and should involve creating backups, ensuring software is up-to-date, optimising for SEO purposes, and monitoring analytics tools.
- Tips for successful website maintenance include making a schedule, taking backups regularly, assessing updates before launching them, and using checklists for tasks.
Limitless Networks, A Kerry Web Design Company
If you’re looking for help managing your website, we offer website maintenance & support services that are designed to keep your website running smoothly. We can help you with website updates, website backups, and more.
Contact us today to learn more!
Not quite ready to contact us? Download our free website maintenance guide. Learn how to secure your website and discover the regular maintenance required to keep your website safe.
