You just invested a sizable chunk of your hard-earned money for a brand new, mobile responsive site, built to draw in the traffic. Whew! Now you won\u2019t have to worry about\u00a0website maintenance\u00a0for at least a few years, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wrong<\/em>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n A website is a lot like a car. If you don\u2019t change your oil regularly, instead of purring while it propels you down the highway, that perfectly tuned engine will seize up and become nothing more than a big, expensive decoration for your driveway. Likewise, if you don\u2019t take proactive steps to maintain your website on at least a monthly basis<\/em>, it will become just as useless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No one wants to waste their money, so I\u2019m going to help you avoid making that mistake by sharing 11 website maintenance tasks you need to do at least every month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You need to become BFFs with Google Search Console<\/a> and Bing Webmaster Tools<\/a> because they will warn you of potential problems before<\/em> they devastate your online marketing efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is there a problem on your site stopping Google and Bing from properly crawling and indexing your pages? Did a shady competitor just point a few thousand shitty links to your website trying to get you penalized? Or did someone hack your site and infect it with malware? Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools will notify you about potential problems via email and in your dashboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Analytics lets you identify\u00a0problems as well as opportunities. You can see traffic trends; increasing\u00a0traffic (in conjunction with increasing conversions) may tell you that your online marketing is effective, while decreasing traffic may indicate\u00a0SEO\u00a0problems. Following the path a visitor takes to a page with unusually high bounce rates may give you insight about what\u00a0information they need. And pages that get a lot of engagement (visits, social shares, links, referrals, etc.) will tell you\u00a0what type of content, products, or services your customers are most interested in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no one size fits all approach though because similar data may mean something very different from one business to another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I recommend Google Analytics<\/a> because it\u2019s both free and incredibly powerful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most web hosts do not offer automated backups<\/a> with standard hosting packages, so if your website gets wiped out, you\u2019re screwed. And let\u2019s face, it\u2014something more urgent will always come up, so you\u2019ll always find a reason not to manually back up your website, so it needs to be automated. This is one of the most important aspects of website maintenance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We use a plugin called UpdraftPlus<\/a> for this. There is a free version<\/a> as well as a paid version<\/a> that offers more features. (I recommend the paid version because the additional features really are worth it.) All of our sites and our clients sites are backed up at least weekly, but many are backed up daily, and if they go down, takes just a few minutes to get it back up and running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I see outdated WordPress core and plugins a lot when we bring on a new client and log into their admin area for the first time. People seem to think that updating their website is a one-time thing. It\u2019s not\u2014it\u2019s at least monthly because new vulnerabilities are identified all the time<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By now, you\u2019ve certainly heard about the infamous Panama Papers, but what you probably haven\u2019t heard is that the hackers gained access through a plugin called Revolution Slider<\/a> that they hadn\u2019t updated. Consequences won\u2019t always be as dramatic as being hacked, but the potential is there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And there\u2019s no reason not to update both WordPress core and plugins regularly. All you need to do is log into your admin area, and with a few clicks, everything can be updated. This is a vital component to effective\u00a0WordPress Security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Broken links create frustrated visitors, but a bigger problem is that they can harm your organic ranking. This is because the search engine bots can\u2019t find the pages that are supposed to be there, and when it happens often, they will devalue your site as a whole. Smart marketers will look for broken links from trusted sites and encourage the site owner to link to their page instead. This means that broken links can cause your site to lose valuable backlinks!<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re wondering how your site would get broken links, the answer is simple. You might have:<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can use Screaming Frog<\/a> to scan your entire site for broken links quickly and easily. The free version will crawl up to 500 pages, but if your site is larger, you\u2019ll need the paid version, which is a tremendous value at about $139.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As web browsers, plugins, and script libraries are updated, they sometimes cause websites to display incorrectly, so invest a few minutes reviewing the critical pages on website on a few different devices. (Desktop, laptop, tablet, phone.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe you had your page speed nailed down right after your last redesign, but along the way, added some things that slowed it down. Run it through Google\u2019s PageSpeed Insights<\/a> to make sure it\u2019s still loading quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I recently had a client who suddenly stopped receiving inquiries through their website due to an update to Contact Form 7<\/a>. The plugin developers didn\u2019t do anything wrong, in fact, they fixed an issue that wasn\u2019t causing any immediate problems for most people, but eventually would have, so by doing the correct thing, they created a problem for some people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This could have been avoided if the client had simple tested their forms after updating the plugin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The checkout process has several components that are regularly updated for security purposes, including the shopping cart, payment gateway, and any other plugins that are integral to the process, so it\u2019s important to run a test transaction through each month to make sure everything functions as it should. You can set your cart in test mode and use test credit card info to process a dummy transaction, but to play it safe, I always create a $.01 product and process a live order too. That way, I can make sure the money actually ends up in the designated account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Search capability has been shown to increase visitor time on site\u2014but only if it provides helpful results. I\u2019ve found that the best way to accurately test this is to ask someone who fits the target demographic to conduct a few searches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If your customers can\u2019t reach you, they won\u2019t trust you. Phone numbers, addresses, links to\u00a0social media\u00a0profiles, etc., all need to updated regularly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n1. Review Google Search Console \/ Bing Webmaster Tools<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
2. Review Analytics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
3. Automated Backup<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
4. Update WordPress and Plugins<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
5. Check for Broken Links<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
6. Check Website on Multiple Devices<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
7. Check Page Speed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
8. Test Functionality of All Forms<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
9. Test Checkout Process<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
10. Test Search Function<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
11. Update Contact Information<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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