7 Powerful Reasons You Need Website Maintenance Services
I see this quite often where business owners get a website built and then they "set it and forget it." Without proper website maintenance services, this can sometimes be a costly and critical mistake in the long run.
Website maintenance is like an oil change for your car. It’s something that keeps everything running smoothly and can prevent major repairs and expenses down the line.
[clickToTweet tweet="Website maintenance is like an oil change for your car. It’s something that keeps everything running smoothly and can prevent major repairs and expenses down the line. #websitemaintenance #websitedesigner" quote="Website maintenance is like an oil change for your car. It’s something that keeps everything running smoothly and can prevent major repairs and expenses down the line. "]
Here are 7 powerful reasons that you need website maintenance services for your business website.
If you don't have some type of website security, you are placing your businesses "home on the web" in danger of hackers and malware that can shut your entire site down in a New York minute.
Even if you don't have a professional company monitoring your company website, you should at minimum have some type of website security plugin or software installed.
You should also make sure that it's configured correctly and check your site weekly for pending software updates.
Most companies offer website maintenance packages that include 24/7 website security and monitoring.
2. Website Backups
Have you ever wondered what would happen if your website data mysteriously disappears or gets hacked? This thought might not be a the top of your list of priorities, but it's something you definitely want to have a plan for.
What would happen if you went to your website and got the dreaded "white screen?" What would be your plan?
When you have daily or weekly backups of your site, you can have the piece of mind in knowing that your website can be recovered if an unfortunate circumstance should happen.
I recommend daily backups if you change your content frequently and weekly backups otherwise.
As I mentioned earlier, you cannot simply "set and forget" your website. Many companies either don't know the importance of regularly updating their software, are in fear of breaking something or just don't have it on their list of things to do.
Most WordPress software updates will add improved functions and features, bug fixes and new levels of security.
You should check for software updates at least, on a weekly basis.
Share this Image On Your Site
4. Updated Website Content
Are you walking around with photos on your cell phone of your last 5 big projects? Never got around to uploading those before and after photos to your website gallery?
Is the latest news on your website from 2015?
Do you have staff photos that include people who haven't worked at your office in years?
Does your website have products and services that you no longer provide?
[clickToTweet tweet="Never got around to uploading those before and after photos to your website gallery? Website list products and services that you no longer provide? Pages on your website with no content? If so, you need website maintenance. " quote="Never got around to uploading those before and after photos to your website gallery? Website list products and services that you no longer provide? Pages on your website with no content? If so, you need website maintenance."]
Do you have pages on your website with no content?
Is the copyright year at the bottom of your website anything other than this current year?
If your answer was yes to any of these questions, you need website maintenance.
With a proper website maintenance program, you can rest assured that your latest and greatest works will be easily uploaded to your website on a regular basis.
Most website maintenance services include things like adding new photos, news, and events to calendars. Other things included can be changing and removing text, adding links, resizing images, adding and removing pages.
These are huge signs that you are in need of a maintenance program for "your online business card" - your website.
5. Website Analytics
You have a business website and that's great, but do you know who visits your site every month? Do you know how many of your website visitors are coming from Google, Bing, and Facebook?
When you have one of the best website maintenance services you can be sure that you have this data and more every single month.
You'll know what pages are visited the most, how long people spend on your website, the bounce rate, the types of devices they are using (mobile vs desktop), the top cities of your visitors and a lot more.
This website analytics data can help you shape your businesses future and assist you in making more informed decisions when it comes to your marketing efforts.
6. Personalized Website Support
Whether you're investing in website updates and maintenance on your site or not, you probably have questions about things like, content, links, hosting, photos, videos, or maybe blogs.
With website support, you'll get the answers to your questions via phone or email. You'll definitely feel more at ease knowing that you have someone on your team that can help you navigate through the murky waters of online marketing and website optimizations.
WordPress offers a ton of different plugin options and the #1 choice to prevent most spam comments from infiltrating your website's blog is Akismet.
Even with this plugin doing it job, occasionally spam comments will still come through. The entire goal of some of these comments is to get backlinks for SEO value and these spammers often make comments that are simply irrelevant and add nothing to the conversation.
When you invest in a good website maintenance program you'll rest comfortably knowing that any spam comments will be filtered out so they won't impact your website's online reputation or security.
Final Thoughts
Your website represents your online business card and online salesforce. It's arguably the most valuable online asset for your business.
Website maintenance should be looked at in the same way you look at maintenance for your car. It's something that should be expected in order to make sure your site is running properly, safe, updated and secure.
If you need help with website maintenance contact me today and I can help.
We agree! The number 1 issue we see is neglecting to update WordPress, website themes, or plug-ins. We are called once the screen stops displaying correctly, and we have to charge an hourly fee to clean up the site. Hopefully, there are backups!!!
We agree! The number 1 issue we see is neglecting to update WordPress, website themes, or plug-ins. We are called once the screen stops displaying correctly, and we have to charge an hourly fee to clean up the site. Hopefully, there are backups!!!
One way to have the date automatically update on the site is to put this little script in the copyright section. © Copyright 2016 – document.write(new Date().getFullYear());
That will display the current date, so your site doesn’t immediately look like it’s never updated. 🙂
Yes Tina, you really have to hope they have back-ups in that case. Thanks for the tip as well!