Why do you need to maintain your website? Because it is important for your business to have a professional image, and if you don’t update your site regularly, this can make you look unprofessional. Updating your website will help keep people coming back to your business; people like new content which they can share with their friends. It also helps build trust in prospective clients that they are dealing with a credible business. If you leave the site without updates for a while, you will slowly lose traffic over time. This article will discuss the importance of website maintenance as well as the different aspects of website maintenance.
Why is it important to maintain your website?
For a business, managing your website content and servers can be complex. You need to make sure that the website is mobile friendly and continues to be up-to-date with the latest trends in technology. Content on your website needs to be updated regularly so that you are not showing outdated information to visitors or potential customers.
Your website is one of your most important assets, but it’s not an easy thing to maintain. The biggest reason why people put their websites on the back burner is because they don’t know how to update them and make sure they run smoothly.
You want your website to always be updated and maintained, but you don’t want to spend hours and hours each week making sure that it runs smoothly, looks well, and generates traffic for you. It’s a big job!
Popular website solutions like Wordpress require constant updating. They need to have plugins updated, php updates, server updates, and a constant stream of new content. If you start to ignore or overlook your small business’ website updates, you will find that your website will slowly loose traffic over time.
What are some of the things that can go wrong with your website?
There is no place for complacency when it comes to your website. There are hundreds of things that can go wrong with your site, and you need to be prepared.
The first thing that can go wrong with your site is that it can be hacked. There are several things that you need to do in order to prevent this from happening, but even so, there may still be vulnerabilities in the back-end. If someone manages to hack your site, they can completely destroy it. To prevent this from happening, you need to verify the security of your site regularly.
Another big issue is moving from HTTP to HTTPS. This means that all of your links will need to be updated.
This is a big undertaking, and if you don’t do it correctly, you could lose a lot of traffic from search engines.I recommend that you use the free tool from Moz to check your site for any broken links.
If you are using WordPress, I also recommend using the free Yoast SEO plugin. It will help you set up your website correctly so that search engines can crawl it easily.
How can you make sure these problems don’t happen?
It’s a scary thought, but the truth is, a lot of people who have a website don’t have an online backup. That means that if somehow there is a problem with their website, they would have to start all over again. The thought of having to create their website from scratch can be quite daunting for most people.
Hackers are always on the prowl for vulnerable websites, and there are thousands of them out there. It’s your job to make sure that your website stays protected, and here are some ways you can do it.
Some ways to prevent your website from being hacked:
- Update your website whenever a new security update is released
- Use strong passwords
- Keep your software up to date
- Avoid suspicious emails and websites
- Protect company data on computers with an antivirus program
- Check the privacy policy before sharing personal information
Common Website Maintenance Tasks
A website needs to be updated on a regular basis. There are many different types of websites, based on the type of content they contain or how they are built, but most websites need to be updated with fresh content in some fashion.
If you do not have an updated site, you are losing out on potential customers. Most people tend to stay updated with the latest news through the internet, and if your site is outdated then they will assume that your company is also outdated.
There are three different types of website maintenance tasks that all businesses should perform in order to keep their sites up to date.
- Content Updates - Your website content is the most important part of your site. This is what your visitors will see and read when they visit your site. If you don’t update your content regularly, then it will become stale and outdated. Your visitors will get bored with your website and stop sharing your content with others.
- Frontend Updates - This is the part of your website that your visitors will see. This includes your blog, about page, contact page, and any other pages that are accessible to the public. If you don’t update these pages regularly, then they will become stale and possibly have outdated content. Also, the frontend can expose security risks to the backend which is important to continually monitor.
- Backend/Server Updates - The backend/server is a very important part of the website and needs to be updated frequently. There are many reasons why you would want to update your server, such as security issues, performance issues, or new features. It’s always good to have a schedule for doing web server maintenance.
Tips on how to keep your site updated and running smoothly
Optimize Your Website
- Use caching
- Use the least number of plugins you can
- Optimize your page load time
- Minimize the number of queries to your database
- Remove unnecessary scripts and stylesheets
Update Your Website
- Update Your Operating System
- Update Your Plugins & Extensions
- Turn on Automatic Updates Or Use Cron Jobs
- Update Plugins and WordPress Core
- Delete Unused Themes and Plugins
- Check for PHP or MySQL Updates
- Check For System Updates
Maintaining your own website can be challenging, but it is important to keep it up-to-date with fresh content. If you are looking for ways to maintain your site or need help updating your website’s design, please reach out to us today. We have the expertise necessary to help you get the most out of your website so that you can focus on more important parts of running your business. The key to successful website maintenance is having a trusted team of professionals who can provide you with help.