With over 1.9 billion websites live online, website maintenance shouldn't be overlooked.

Failing to maintain your website properly can result in a bad user experience and many other problems. Websites that aren't taken care of properly are vulnerable to hacks and downtime. 

Continue reading this article to learn what web maintenance is and why you need to do it.
 

Website Maintenance Best Practices

Once you build a website, you might think you are finished with the task, but that isn't the case. Instead of thinking of your website as something that is solid, think of it as an ever-changing river.

Maintenance is the act of making sure your website is operating properly and serving the users as it should. Here are some maintenance tips you can't skip.

1. Test User Experience

When you create your website, it is designed with the user in mind. As time progresses, things change, and you need to make sure your website is still providing the best user experience.

While your website technology may have been up to date and easy to use in the past, it may be out of date now if its been years since your website was created. You should make sure none of your websites use flash since many browsers won't render flash properly or at all.

You need to go through pages, posts and every other part of your website to make sure it flows well for your visitors.

2. Check for Broken Links

If you link to other websites or link within your own site, you will experience broken links. Broken links take your visitors to 404 error pages when they click it. These pages should be optimized to direct them to a helpful resource or piece of content, but they still aren't the best user experience.

Broken links can hurt your site's SEO. Making sure to check all links are working properly should be done on a monthly basis. You can use tools like Google Search Console if you don't want to go through each page of your website to look for them.

3. Check for Optimization

As search engines update, you need to make sure your website is optimized with the latest SEO practices. If your website is optimized with old techniques, your rankings could be negatively affected. 

Look at your metadata, see if you are over optimized or under optimized. Over-optimized content is just as bad as under optimized content because you may get a penalty from Google.

4. Site Speed

As you add content to your website, it may cause problems on your site. If you don't check to see if your site speed is affected, you may have a very slow site that is causing ranking problems. 

If you identify a speed problem, you need to address it right away. The good thing is these problems usually aren't too difficult to fix so you can start to recover your rankings.

5. Check All Forms On Your Site

While your website forms may look like they are working fine, you won't know for sure unless you test them. Test your important forms at least every month. If your contact form isn't working properly, you could miss out on business and other opportunities. 

6. Security Updates

There are data breaches and other vulnerability problems that could affect your website. You should keep an eye on your website's security at all times, but at least check every week or month to see if your plugins and programs are up to date. If your site isn't up to date, that is a place where hackers can attack your site and gain access easily.

7. Update Your Blog

Your blog is a large part of your website maintenance. You need to blog at least once a week to keep your blog fresh. Some websites choose to blog a little less frequently while there are other companies that post multiple blogs every week.

You shouldn't only update your blog with new content. Go back through your website and check for blog posts that are out of date. If your content is stale, you can update it can make it relevant again.

Reviving your old content can help you keep from having to create as much new content on your website. Your goal is to bring visitors to your site to create leads and convert them. When your blog is updated with relevant and high-quality content, your visitors are more likely to trust your website.

8. Backup Your Website

Any time you do an update or put new content on your website, you should backup your website. If your web host doesn't do automatic backups for your site, you need to make sure to do it for yourself. Even if your host does backups, you will be even safer if you do backups as well.

If you aren't sure how to back up your website, ask your web hosting company how to back up your specific account. Different companies have different processes for backing up important files and may have a specific place they store them for exportation.
 

Keeping Your Website Up to Date and Functioning

It might seem like a complicated process to keep your website up and running. If you have a dedicated team to take care of these tasks, you won't have to worry about the tasks getting done when you break them up and assign them. Some companies don't have the resources to take care of these tasks in-house.

If you don't feel like you can handle all the duties that go into maintaining your website, it might be time to look for an option that takes these tasks out of your hands.
 

Take Complicated Tech Projects Off Your Hands

If you are tired of trying to figure out your website maintenance challenges, we can help you. Whether you want a traditional website or an eCommerce website, we know exactly what to do. Look at our plans & pricing today to see how we can help you.