Website maintenance essentials

When I built my first website in 1996, the web was less than a decade old. By the time I started my company in 2003, business owners had begun to realize they needed to invest in their web presence. Now in 2021, most business owners realize that their online presence isn’t a one-time activity. While that now involves much more than just a website, even the website alone needs to be maintained.

Here are five ongoing maintenance tasks you should consider for your website.

Updating the content

Ever looked at a website, read one thing, then called or visited the business and found something else to be the case? Review your website content regularly to be sure it’s inaccurate. If you say one thing on your website but do something different, that will turn potential customers off. Also, be sure that photos are relatively recent, so people, locations, and products look the same on your website and in real life.

Drive traffic to your website

Sure, we’ve all heard the famous phrase, “If you build it, they will come.” Unfortunately, that’s not true when it comes to websites. Getting people to visit your website takes continuous work. If you want people to find you through Google, one great activity is ongoing blogging. For most, writing a 300 – 600 word blog once or twice a month is sufficient. If your industry is more competitive than that, consider blogging weekly.

Track analytics

It helps to know what pages and blog articles people are and aren’t reading on your website. That can help you determine topics you need to write more about, whether or not you need to make certain information easier to find, and even if you need to rearrange your website’s menu.

Monitor technical SEO

If where and how you show up in search engines is important to you, you should invest time or money in your technical SEO setup. Following Google’s recommended best practices ensures that Google can easily index whatever content you have on your website.

Upgrade and backup

Many modern websites run on a content management system—a CMS—that itself requires ongoing maintenance. Be sure to upgrade the software and any add-ons regularly, and keep it backed up as well. I recommend once or twice a month scheduling a session where you back everything up, upgrade it, back it up again, then make sure the upgrade didn’t break anything.

Of course, you don’t have to do that all yourself. If it sounds like a lot of work you’d rather outsource, you can always hire a professional or marketing agency to help. Whoever created your website may offer those services, or you can reach out to a local professional.