Website maintenance is the act of regularly checking your website for mistakes and issues and keeping it relevant and updated. This should be done regularly to keep providing relevant information to customers, improving customer experience, and strengthening your SEO and Google rankings.
Keeping a website attractive and well maintained is important for companies small and big. Your website is the window to your business. You should keep it clean so that customers can see inside.
Many small businesses in particular let a few website maintenance tasks slide. This can lead to a website that doesn’t work properly. Therefore leading to even more expenses when it needs to be fixed.
So what does website maintenance include?
Just like phone apps, website plugins and themes need to be regularly updated. But, in updating these plugins and themes, there is the risk of it not being compatible with other plugins or your version of WordPress.
This means that you can’t just update plugins automatically, after each plugin update, you need to check if your website is still working. Here are a few website maintenance tasks broken down into how often it needs to be done.
Annual tasks
- Website domain name renewal.
- Maybe update your website design to make sure it fits with the times and your business strategy.
- Make sure each of your page’s content is still accurate.
- Consider updating your best-performing blogs, and update them for higher rankings.
Quarterly tasks
- Check and see if there is any room for improvement on your website.
- Update all the images and graphics on your website.
- Update content that is out of date.
- Check that your website is mobile friendly and displays well on different screen sizes.
- Test to see which calls to action never get clicked and try something different.
- Check if your backups are still working and if you can restore the last version of your website.
Monthly tasks
- Test your website’s loading and interaction speed. It should load in less than 3 seconds, otherwise, speak to your website developer.
- Analyse if your website security is up to date and working.
- Check your website statistics to see how you are performing and make a plan on how to improve.
- Do a local search audit to see if you are still relevant in your local area.
Weekly tasks
- Click on every button of your website to see if it still works and goes through to the right page.
- Update your core plugins and theme.
- Write and post a blog post to give through relevant information to your customers and increase your organic traffic.
Daily tasks
- Update your plugins to make sure you have the latest functionality.
- Update your theme so that all parts of your website work properly.
- Do security updates so that no one can hack your website.
- Make daily backups of anything that might have changed, such as comments from subscribers.
To do all this seems like a really daunting task, and unless you know what you are doing, you might mess it up and break your website. Therefore, we recommend that you get a professional to do it for you. Not only will they do it faster and cheaper, but they will also do it well.
What happens when you don’t do website maintenance?
Maintaining your website is just like maintaining your car. You need to make sure that it has water, oil and petrol before you drive. However, if you don’t maintain it, your car might break down.
Similarly, if you do not maintain your website, it will break down eventually.
There are some tasks that you may be able to do yourself, such as checking if your car has enough oil. You might even be able to perform a basic service if you know about cars.
Similarly, with your website, there are things that you need to do yourself, such as checking if your content is still up to date, or if the pages are still relevant to your customers.
However, there are certain things that we recommend you let the professionals handle. Such as backups, plugin and theme updates, SEO, and security. Because, if these things go wrong, it can break your website, which can cost a small fortune to fix.
To learn more about all types of Digital Marketing, visit our Facebook Page.
Frequently asked questions
How long does website maintenance take?
You can expect spending around 5 minutes per day on website maintenance. However, tasks that need to be done weekly and monthly may take a bit longer.
Updating an article on your website may take up to 30 minutes. When updating content, remember to resubmit your link to Google and request them to recrawl your website.
How much does website maintenance cost in South Africa?
You can expect to pay around R450 for website maintenance. Check out our Vlerke package, which is a website maintenance solution. We do the work so that you do not have to.
Kwikstert’s website maintenance includes daily backups and security checks to ensure your website is safe. It includes plugin and theme updates as they become available. Monitoring of your website to see if it works properly. And a thorough monthly report to show you how your website is performing.
How often should you do website maintenance?
The more regular you can do website maintenance, the less time it will take. Just take 5 minutes per day, log into your WordPress website and do the updates. If you do this every day, it will take very little time.
However, if you leave it for 6 months or longer, you may have to replace your entire website with a new one. Save time and money by signing up for our maintenance hosting package.
What is included in monthly website maintenance?
Monthly website maintenance should include backups, plugin updates, theme updates, PHP updates, security updates and content updates.
When you focus on this every month, your website will be safe and keep on working properly. Do not leave it until it’s too late.
Why do websites need maintenance?
Like everything else in the world, websites change. The technology evolves, customer’s needs change and new technology gets invented.
The website landscape has changed so much over the last few years that a website built in 2019 that has not been updated regularly will be obsolete.
Plugin updates come out daily to fix security issues and integrate well with other new programs.
Themes get updates regularly to keep up with new features that website developers and designers want to see.
To keep up with all of these changes, you need to keep your website up to date, backed up and secure. If you do not know how to maintain your website, it is best to have a website maintenance professional do the work for you.