There are many websites out there, and they all need regular maintenance. How do you decide whether or not a site needs attention? What is the best way to approach a website maintenance checklist?

Website maintenance scheduled involves a variety of website maintenance tasks, such as updating information, fixing broken links, adding new features, improving poor user experience, etc. Some of these tasks are fairly simple, whereas others require some technical expertise.

This article tackles the simplified website maintenance tasks you must do regularly by yourself and without the help of a technical person.

17 Top Website Maintenance Tasks for Your Website

As a business owner or website operator, there are several repetitive tasks that you have to perform on a daily basis to keep your website efficient and effective and improve user experience. Some of them can be automated and managed by third parties, but others require you to do it yourself.

Audit Old Content

Your old posts need a refresh! You can gain more traffic by auditing, updating, and optimizing your old blog posts. This is a time-consuming task, but the rewards (like increased search engine visibility) are worth it. Go through your old posts, and consider whether you should update the content, review SEO and if there’s anything you can do to increase the rankings now.

Here are some things you need to remember:

  • Add internal links.
  • Are there other relevant posts you can link to where appropriate?
  • Can you promote it again?
  • Can you come up with new places or people to share this article with?

How often should you do this? Every two to three years for most sites; however, you may need to update your site more frequently if you publish often enough.

Check Your Social Media Links

If you provide links to download files, you must check that these links work from time to time. You could even ask your users to report issues if there are any. However, broken links can cause your customers to lose trust in your company, and this is something you shouldn’t risk!

You can check it by going to your website from an incognito window (not using cookies) and downloading all the file size. Ensure that the correct link is being used. There should be no problems downloading anything.

Fix Your Media Library

If you’ve been writing some blogs for a while, you may already have many broken images saved in your library. Do all of those images still exist on your site? You may want to delete some broken images that aren’t being used or are taking up too much space.

With even the ones you’re currently using, you can optimize them to save space and improve your site speed.

To clean out your WordPress media uploads, make sure that you’re deleting any “unattached files” (i.e., unnecessary files that aren’t attached to a post or page) using the Media Library Manager plugin. This allows you to control better what gets deleted from your server.

Your Media Library and product images may be too large. You should consider deleting some of the old stuff. Be careful with any plugin that removes unnecessary files; make sure you back up everything first and read the warnings and instructions very closely.

Fix Broken Links

Excessive errors on your site could frustrate your visitors and make them think that your site is outdated or out of touch. In addition, you should avoid using a broken link-checking plugin as it might slow down your website and use up all your hosting resources. Instead, try using Dead Link Checker to check your site for broken links.

Just click over to their site. Enter your URL, and click “Check.” Give it a few minutes. Scanning takes time. Once the scan is done, you can fix any broken links to point to the correct pages. If you find a dead link and the linked page was removed, you can update to a new source. Or remove the link. Or update the URL to the previous version of the page.

You should look for two kinds of errors: 404 and 500 errors.

Page not found (404) Error:A 404 error is returned by your site when someone tries to access a nonexistent page. This may be because you accidentally deleted an important page or could indicate a more serious problem, such as a private server malfunction. In addition, you should check whatever logs you use to record visitors’ activity to see whether any unusual traffic was generated during the period of time this happened.

Internal Server Errors: Thesea are messages when the dedicated server could not process your request. This error message usually happens due to an overload of the web server’s load.

Improve Visitor Experience

Your website should be designed to answer questions about your business. Customers who know what they want can ask you directly, but many people need information before purchasing. For example, some people may not see they need to buy something until they see an advertisement online or hear a sales pitch over the phone. Others may be interested in buying a product but need more information first. You can help them by providing clear answers to their questions.

Your online presence should be impressive, but it isn’t enough! You need to use your web design skills to create an attractive and responsive website.

Improve Website Speed

Websites need to load quickly. A one-second delay in page loads can reduce conversion rates. Some companies are losing billions of dollars because of slow loading pages. You can use tools like WebPageMonitoring by WebSitePulse to monitor your site’s speed. These tools include advanced features that test your site speed and test other aspects of performance.

Security monitoring systems are very helpful when setting up a new website. They’re easy to use, and they’ll notify you about any problems. Hosting companies should always offer monitoring services to help eCommerce businesses avoid downtime.

Leverage New Features

Many new technologies are coming out every day. Of course, some are better than others. Keeping your application updated means taking advantage of anything new that comes along. You may even get some performance improvements.

Moderate Your Comments

Comment moderation means approving pending comments. Responding to comments is a common courtesy. Marking spam comments is an easy task. Not answering comments gets visitors off your site. A link to another personal blog post expands the conversation. Disabling comments is not recommended as it may cause problems for Internet users who want to leave comments.

Optimize Your Database

Optimization of databases should be done regularly. To optimize them, you need to know how to use different commands. You also need to make sure that your data stays safe by using the right type of encryption.

Database cleaning and optimization plugins like WordPress Optimize help you clean out old data from your database. This speeds up the loading times of pages on your website.

Remove Links to Dubious Domains

Linking to unsafe domains makes your site seem untrustworthy, damaging your brand reputation. You should remove these links as soon as you discover them. This action prevents your visitors from being exposed to phishing, malware, or other unwanted software.

Remove Registered Spam Users

Deleting spammers helps reduce site load time. First, go to the Users tab in your Dashboard and check the boxes next to any spammers. Then, from the Bulk Actions drop-down menu, choose Delete. Spammers should be deleted automatically using plugins. Preventing new spammers from registering is done by installing other plugins or having the latest plugin updates.

Remove Unused and Outdated Plugins

Plugins are one of WordPress’ best features. However, they take up space and resources. Therefore, you’ll want to periodically check to see if any of them are out of date or aren’t being used anymore. Simply go to the Plugins section of your WordPress Dashboard.

Review each plugin. Look for plugins that the developer hasn’t updated or removed. Delete those you no longer need. Find new plugins instead.

Review Website Passwords

Passwords should be uppercase and lowercase letters, digits, and symbols. Longer passwords are more difficult to crack. Password managers help create strong passwords. Don’t use the same password for different accounts. Change your password regularly.

Settle Your Security Issues

Ensure no security breaches and issues happen. Hackers exploit known weaknesses, and system administrators work hard to keep the systems safe. Keeping your web applications updated is key to keeping them secure. Update your website regularly with new software and security patches. This prevents hackers from breaking into your site.

Your website must be updated to avoid this problem. Hackers use outdated applications to break into different types of websites. This makes your site vulnerable to them.

Update Your Backups

Make sure to have regular backups of your site. A well-maintained website can be protected from attacks using a backup plugin system. Hosting providers often offer this routine maintenance service for free, so you don’t have to worry about additional hosting costs. Check with them first before installing anything else. Hackers can attack your site if you don’t have an automatic backup system. You have a backup file, even if you’re paying someone else to maintain it.

Backup files should be stored off-site to prevent data loss due to natural disasters or human error. Cloud storage is also free and easy to access.

Update Your Web Applications

Hackers love exploiting known vulnerabilities in software. So if you’re running any kind of software, update it regularly. Managed WordPress hosting plan means that the web host takes care of updating your site. After that, you just concentrate on your business and growing your traffic.

Update Your Premium Themes and Plugins

Plugins and themes should be updated regularly. Security updates are also crucial to maintaining a secure environment. This is especially important for WordPress users who use plugins or themes that may expose vulnerabilities.

When their developers release regular plugin updates, you should always update your premium plugins and themes. This makes sure you’re safe from any potential vulnerabilities or exploits.

What Happens When You Don’t Maintain Your Website

A poorly maintained website can be damaging to both your business and yourself. Some businesses just don’t realize that they should be maintaining their larger websites. This could potentially cost them new leads, sales, and potential customers passing by without stopping by because their website isn’t optimized.

More Susceptible to Hacking

Company websites need to be updated with the regular software updates. Hackers are always looking for new ways to exploit weaknesses in systems. A regular website maintenance plan ensures that your site stays secure.

Your website should have proper security measures in place to protect the sensitive information of your users and customers. This includes encryption methods such as SSL, anti-hacking tools, firewalls, and backup systems. These security measures must be implemented and maintained correctly by trained personnel.

A website maintenance plan means keeping your site safe from hacking attacks. Hackers find security holes in web pages by randomly guessing names or numbers. Keep your website up to date to protect yourself from such attacks.

Miss out on Other Weekly Updates

Your website should be compatible with current web standards. Your website should use modern technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3 because old versions of these will reduce the loading speed of your pages.

Decreased Search Engine Rankings

Regularly updating your website is important to stay relevant and maintain high rankings. Your website needs unique content updates to be successful. Ensure your content management is up-to-date and fresh.

Your website should be appealing on the first click. You need to post unique content regularly to maintain your search engine optimization. Regularly updating your content keeps your rankings high.

Your website should be appealing on the first click. Therefore, you need to create great content and post it frequently. It also affects SEO strategies when you post new information about your website.

SEO articles help you stay ahead of your competition by keeping you top of mind. Unique content keeps you visible and relevant while maintaining your rankings in search results. Additionally, updating your website with fresh content regularly ensures your visibility on all platforms.

Site Traffic Decreases

Poorly maintained websites won’t get as much attention. Both Google Search Console and users will notice pages, links, and other elements that don’t work. Visitors will start avoiding your pages, and the latter’s ranking of them will change accordingly. Failing traffic caused by poor site upkeep can be a vicious cycle. Stopping its decline requires vast amounts of time and energy. It’s far simpler to practice an effective eCommerce website maintenance package.

To End

These top website maintenance tasks should not be taken for granted because not performing them can be detrimental to your online business. Do you need help with your digital marketing strategies? ITD Webdesign offers professional website maintenance services. Give us a call to know more.