A Brief Guide to Website Maintenance

Website maintenance is basically an integral part of owning a website. Whether you have an expert do it for you or you yourself keep your website up to date, the point is to maintain the website and perform regular checks. This short guide will help you understand the aspects that you need to focus on when it comes to your website’s maintenance.
Performing regular website maintenance can help you increase your website's performance, security, and usability. With regular maintenance, your website will run smoother, thus ensuring a better user experience. It can also help prevent problems before they occur, which saves you time and money in the long run.
We will get into it in detail but to give you an overview, a well-maintained website is a site that does not have broken links, no out of date posts, images, or pages. It also has a great URL structure that makes sense to both search engines and viewers.

Why is website maintenance important?

Some people think that just building a website and then letting it be would bring in business, traffic, and leads. However, getting a website built is just the first step. And the real job begins after a website is live.
If you ignore a website after development and leave it hanging, its code and its software would eventually get outdated. This would lead to what we call broken links, increased load time, and an overall sloppy user experience. That eventually leads to frustrated clients, increased bounce rates, and eventually no ranking on search engines.
You don’t want to face all that right? Yes, we know.
So, now that we’ve established how important website maintenance is, let’s talk about the benefits and maintenance plans for your website.
First things first, we have discussed that website maintenance is important, but what exactly is website maintenance, in technical terms?

What exactly is website maintenance?

It is the process of performing actions to check for technical issues and errors that might occur over time. The objective is to keep the website updated, keep the links up and running, and keep the website structure as smooth as possible.
Moreover, looking for security issues, content updates, and search engine optimization is also a part of website maintenance.
If you do keep your website up to date, it would lead to two things precisely, happy visitors and increased ranking on search engines and that is exactly what you need. Digital marketers and SEO experts in Dubai and around the world highly recommend regular checkups and continuous maintenance.
Let’s explore the top 5 factors that you should keep in check in terms of website maintenance.

1. Security

One of the key aspects of website maintenance is keeping it secure. Security is a huge concern for all website owners. You wouldn’t want your website to get hacked or breached, would you?
This is true for all the platforms but if you are someone who owns a WordPress website, you should know that this framework is susceptible to most hacker attacks and is the most targeted one as well.
Hackers usually exploit old and outdated software and weaknesses in security patches. Older websites are an easier target for hackers. Moreover, one thing that creates issues is having too many plugins and especially outdated ones.
This is the reason why it is important to make sure that the latest security patches and updated plugins are installed. Expired security certificates are to be taken seriously and you should frequently run health and security checkups.

2. SEO

We all know that updating a website can be a tedious and time-consuming task but is critical to the overall health of the site. When it comes to SEO, outdated content or content that has been moved can create problems for search engines and users alike. Keeping things fresh and your website updated with the latest information will ensure users and crawlers stay happy and engaged on your site.
One of the most important things you can do when it comes to SEO is to ensure your website is updated. Unfortunately, this seems to be one of the most neglected factors in many organizations when it comes to SEO.
If you were to ask me what one Google RankingFactor has the most negative impact on a website when not implemented correctly, I wouldn't hesitate to point my finger at updating. To avoid disappointment in your search engine results you need an updating strategy in place.
The quality of your content, the quality of your images, page load speed, schema markup, etc. are some of the key things that you need to update on a regular basis. Moreover, algorithm updates are what you need to look out for. Be ready for any updates that impact your website’s ranking and make amends quickly so that your ranking doesn’t get affected.

3. User Experience

Updating a website is vital for a better user experience. Plugins, themes, and even the main content on a website must be updated every once in a while, otherwise, it'll become obsolete. Keeping everything on an optimal level will increase your credibility and will ensure a better user experience.
An efficient, updated, and crisp website is key to creating an effective customer experience. Without it, your visitors will have difficulty getting the information they need, the site is bound to have bugs, and will most likely not convert potential clients into paying clients.
What happens is that if a website isn’t updated regularly, its template files stop working properly and that leads to broken pages and decreased responsiveness.
Lastly, an updated website shows visitors that your business is active and you’re ready to engage with people. Correct and detailed information is what increases customer trust and you need your customers to trust your business. Keeping your content consistent throughout your website will ensure a smooth user experience.

4. Customer loyalty

This is true for all aspects of website maintenance but especially in terms of updated content. If your website visitors are happy about the updated information on your website, they’re more likely to come back. On the other hand, if someone comes to your website and sees that your content is outdated, hard to find and user experience is sloppy, they wouldn’t come back.
Keeping the visitors happy and satisfied is the prime objective and there is nothing better than an updated and well-maintained website when it comes to keeping visitors happy. Happiness leads to frequent website visits and eventually to increased loyalty and this is what you should be aiming for.

5. Backups

Keeping backups is one of the primary functions of a website maintenance team. Some people ignore the importance of keeping backups but it is actually critical to have backups. The reason is that a thousand things can go wrong with a website and if things go south ways and you lose control of your website, you will want to have core files as backup.
Your website might come under a hacker’s attack or malware attacks if there are no frequent and proper backups. Web development experts recommend a monthly backup for a simple website. However, if your website is a complex one with dynamic content, such as an e-commerce website, you would want to keep backups more frequently.

What is a website maintenance plan?

A website maintenance plan is essentially a thorough roadmap for continuous updates and support for a live website. It might seem a bit simple but it’s actually not. The reason is that it involves all the technical aspects of updating a website, the timeframes, and checklists for all the technical checkups required.
Here are some of the key elements of a website maintenance plan:

Routine server maintenance

It is the process of checking for errors, repairs, backs up and updates to improve the working condition of the server. The time period for server maintenance varies but mostly it is done weekly or monthly according to server/web owner need. The commonly used software are Linux, IIS, Apache.

Website Improvements

This includes content optimization, technical updates, and URL structure optimization. It is an ongoing process as well and needs constant focus. Not updating frequently might lead to increased load time, sloppy user experience, and decreased ranking.

Emergencies

You should be on top of any emergency situation that can happen. Possible emergencies include downed server, functionality issues, hacking attempts, etc. Keep a frequent schedule for checking the website to be able to cope up with any emergency.

Coding issues

Errors do happen when it comes to coding and one simple mistake could make a huge difference when it comes to website structure. Coding maintenance includes code fixes and improvements for better responsiveness and better overall usability.

Monitoring

Monitoring your website’s performance is an ongoing process. You need someone who is dedicated to website maintenance and who keeps a keep eye on the website from all angles. It is a good idea to keep a thorough checklist ready for website maintenance. It would be easier to follow that checklist and will ensure you don’t miss anything important.
Make it a point to constantly monitor your website for all the fixes, required, updates, security issues, etc. It would ensure that your website is up and running and is ready to serve your customers.

This is it for today’s blog. I hope that you enjoyed reading it. Do share your feedback with me and you can always reach out to me if you have any questions about web development.
If you have a website that is not performing well or if you want to build a new website for your business, contact Prism Digital, the best web development agency in Dubai and our web development experts would assist you in building a website that looks amazing, converts well and ranks high on search engines. Thank you and Goodbye.