The 8 Critical Dos and Don’ts of Website Maintenance

Jun 28

You’ve been working on a website development project for weeks. You finally set the site to live and sit back and bask in a job well done, a job completely complete.

Well, not so fast.

When your website goes live, you have ended one project, but started another. You’ve moved from the website development phase to the website maintenance phase.

What Is Website Maintenance and Why Does It Matter?

Website maintenance is a series of tasks you must perform weekly, monthly, and annually to keep your website running at optimal performance.

If you ignore website maintenance, you may:

Deliver a poor user experience. Website maintenance ensures that your site is working properly and sharing information that will effectively drive visitors through your on-site funnel.
Be invisible to searches. An unmaintained website can lose its search rankings, causing fewer people to find your brand via search.
Miss leads and sales. If features on your site aren’t working -- such as contact forms or shopping carts -- you can lose customers who are ready to do business with you.
Have no website at all. In a worst-case scenario, you could lose all of the work you did in the website development phase. A poorly maintained site can crash and leave you without any site at all.

As you can see, website maintenance is essential for attracting and converting customers. It protects your investment and keeps your online visibility up so more customers can find and do business with you.

So, how do you manage website maintenance?

8 Website Maintenance Dos and Don’ts

Follow these eight dos and don’ts to set up good habits for your website maintenance.

1. DO conduct regular audits on your site.

A strong website maintenance plan starts by scheduling regular audits. How often you perform each audit will depend on your business and how often you update your website. The more you update your content, the more you should conduct each audit.

Messaging Audit: Review the content on your site to ensure all marketing messaging is accurate and up-to-date.
SEO Audit: Use Google Search Console and an SEO tool like Semrush to ensure your site does not have any search visibility issues and is increasing in search rankings.
Technical Audit: Scan your site for backend and technical issues such as 404 errors, bad redirects, and negative backlinks.
Quality Assurance: Go through the pages on your site as a user (and review it from multiple device sizes). Submit a form or purchase a product to get the full experience.
Analytics Review: Review your Google Analytics to see how people use your site and to identify any problems, such as a drop in traffic or users.
Speed Check: Rate the site of your speed using a tool like Google PageSpeed Insights to ensure your site continues to load quickly.
Security Check: Scan your site with a tool like Sucuri SiteCheck to look for malware, viruses, and malicious code.

2. DO know your account information.

When your website development is complete, the developer will pass it over to you. Your website is going to leave their hands and become your responsibility. You need the information required to properly manage and maintain the site. You must know:

How to access and edit the site. Ask for all login information as well as a short tutorial on how you can make small edits.
Who to turn to for immediate needs. Ask your developer whether or not you have access to support and if so, who you can contact.
How much you pay. Get details on expenses, and calendar when they reoccur so you can review upcoming expenses.
What you are paying for. Hosting plans can include a lot of things you may be paying for but may not need (dev environment, dedicated server, high-cost maintenance fee, etc.). Know your costs and talk to your developer about what you are paying for and why.

3. DON’T forget who has access to your site.

Keep tabs on who has access to your site. Track who has access, and regularly update the list and remove people who no longer need access. Also, regularly change passwords for an added layer of protection.

4. DO install updates.

Software is constantly changing and improving. The software used to build your website will need to be regularly updated to provide new features and more importantly, reduce issues with spam, errors, and security. Schedule weekly updates to your site’s:

Plugins
Theme
Core / Content Management System

5. DO regularly back up your site.

Even if you regularly update your site, you may still encounter issues. That’s why it’s imperative that you create backups of your site. Use a system that automatically creates backups of your site weekly or monthly (depending on how often you make changes to your site). Always back up your site before you perform any updates to your site software.

6. DON’T forget about comments.

If your site allows comments, make it part of your routine to review and moderate comments. If a comment is from a real person, engage with them by answering their question or adding to their statement. Keep an eye out for spam, and mark comments as such if you find malicious-looking posts.

7. DO add fresh content.

A website is a living marketing asset. It should be regularly updated with fresh content to keep it relevant and useful. Don’t consider your work done when your first few web pages go live. Keep adding to your site.

Create a content marketing editorial plan that outlines how you will add more content to the site.
Build new landing pages to promote offers and drive leads.
Publish new blog posts that entertain, engage, and educate your audience as well as support a strong SEO strategy. (Fresh content attracts search engines and can boost search rankings.)

8. DO keep up with the times.

Website trends and best practices are constantly changing. What you implement today in terms of design and functionality will likely be outdated within a year or two. Keep up with the times on your website, and plan to do a redesign every two or three years.

How to Get All of Your Website Maintenance Done

When you launch a website, your work is not over. Follow the dos and don’ts of website maintenance listed in this post, and if you feel like you can’t accomplish this on your own, seek a partner who can help.

Your website is too important to ignore. It is the foundation of your marketing. Give it the attention it deserves.

If you need help setting up website maintenance plans for your website, SpotOn is here to help. Contact us to learn more about our website services. Contact SpotOn today.

Amanda Sanz