What is Website Maintenance And Why Should You Hire A Website Maintenance Services Company?
Website maintenance is the process of keeping a check on a website regularly for errors and downtime and keeping it up to date and relevant for users.
Websites should be maintained on a regular and consistent basis so that you can keep your website healthy, boost traffic growth and build up your SEO and google rankings.
Making a website maintained efficiently helps small and large businesses to lure customers and retain them. It is easy for businesses, particularly startups. A website maintenance company will make sure your website is working well most of the time.
Steps Involved in Website Maintenance Services
To keep your website running smoothly, you need to complete a long list of tasks. Security updates and patches of websites are the most crucial ones to be done. If these security updates are done, the website is prone to danger when someone clicks on it.
Keeping this in mind, here is the list of tasks that need to be done.
Website Maintenance Tasks To Be Done Weekly
- It needs to be checked that all pages are loading without any errors.
- You should run a backup to store the previous version of the site even after the update.
- Updates to be made to website software and plugins.
- It needs to be checked if all forms are running correctly.
- Any spam comments from pages and posts should be removed.
- The page should be checked for any broken links.
- Look for 404 errors and fix or resolve them.
- One or more blog posts should be written to engage the audience and boost SEO traffic.
Website Maintenance Tasks To Be Done Monthly
- The loading speed of the website should be checked and ensure that nothing is making it slow.
- Security scans should be reviewed and analyzed to ensure that everything is in its place.
- Past web analytics should be analyzed.
- Articles should be checked if they need any updates on the blog.
Website Maintenance Tasks To Be Done Quarterly
- Website design and structure should be reviewed and checked if it needs any improvement.
- Graphics and images should be checked if they can be updated.
- SEO and meta descriptions should be reviewed, and check if they can be made better.
- Forms, call to action must be tested and modified.
- All the workload assigned should be reviewed from time to time and check if something can be automated.
- The website should be checked on all devices whether it is working fine and displaying correctly.
- The advertising and marketing campaigns should also be reviewed to see if any update is required.
- To check backup health, a previous version of the website should be restored.
Website Maintenance Tasks To Be Done Yearly
- Any references to the current year should be updated.
- Each page should be checked and reviewed for content accuracy, grammar, typing mistakes, and relevancy to the topic.
- Check for all active email addresses and see if there are any excess and can be removed.
- Make sure that you renew your website domain name.
- Check whether a website design update is due.
- The top-performing blog articles should be reviewed and checked if some new content could be added.
Why Is It Essential To Hire A Website Maintenance Company?
Most small companies have much more to think about in their businesses than check their website regularly. Though buying a domain name, setting up a temporary website, and thinking about it later, might be alluring but it is not a good idea due to several reasons. There are many other factors for which it is considered essential to keep the website up to date, active, and safe.
Search Engine Optimization
What is the primary purpose of starting a business? The answer is to have an audience, customers, or clients who would help the business gain profits. There will be customers and clients once traffic is driven towards your website. This could be possible when you keep your website regularly updated.
Google ranks the websites based on the most relevant information and updated information on their search engine results page. De-indexing is also done to a website if no update has been done for the content in recent times and infection of malware has been suspected on the website. Therefore, it is recommended that your website should be updated regularly with the latest news, trends, keywords, content, grammar, etc to maintain the SEO rankings.
Regular website maintenance is vital for boosting SEO health.
Customer Engagement
As soon as the website goes live, it is expected that it will gain some traffic and audience reach. The potential customers who showed their interest should be retained. There is a possibility of losing the customers if your website could not help them with what they needed.
The website should be free from any typing errors, grammatical issues. It should have all the information that a customer wants, and the website should look engaging, appealing and consistent in updating the latest trends.
Security
Security is one the most important reasons for focusing on website maintenance, especially if the website is storing some data of customers. Installation of regular software updates and security patches should be ensured if you are using website-building platforms like WordPress or Wix.
It is advised because hackers find it easy and simple to find and locate websites that have been inactive for quite a long time.
Corporate Image
Creating a website with a proper structure and a professional look is simple and easy. Every business is expected to deliver its theme from its website. In the same way, professional companies need to maintain a professional website with its related features.
In case the website fails to deliver the image of professionalism, the customers will switch to another website wherein they get according to their expectations.
Your Sanity
For a business, the most important element is its website. On one hand, it can become a support and an asset if working in a smooth and updated condition. On the other hand, if it is not working in a good condition, it can become your liability and can cost you much.
Also, if you lag behind the task of website maintenance, it will be a very lengthy task to start and make it up to date. Therefore, it is suggested to start afresh if the website is not taken care of over a long period of time.