Websites are built with a purpose. That purpose could be selling a product, sharing information, or providing a service. Whatever the purpose of a website, it needs to be maintained to achieve its goals.
Your site should now be running smoothly. However, there is no certainty that it will function at this optimal level forever.
Like a vehicle, keeping your website in tip-top condition requires constant work. That’s why we’ve created this comprehensive website maintenance activity for your site.
In this post, we’ll discuss what activities your Chicago-based small business needs in website maintenance.
1. Review Google Search Console / Bing Webmaster Tools: Do you need help preventing Google and Bing from adequately crawling and indexing your pages? Has a shady competitor tried to penalize you by pointing a few thousand shady links at your website? Or someone hacked your site and infect it with malware? Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools will notify you of potential issues via email and on your dashboard.
2. Review Google Analytics: Google Analytics lets you identify problems and opportunities. You can see traffic trends; Increasing traffic can tell you that your online marketing is working well while decreasing traffic can indicate an SEO problem. Following the path of visitors to a page with an unusually high bounce rate can give you insight into what information they need. And pages that get a lot of traffic. It will tell you what content, products, or services your customers are most interested in.
3. Automat Backup: Most web hosts don’t offer automatic backups with standard hosting packages, so if your site gets wiped, you’re screwed. And let’s face it—something more urgent will always come up, so you’ll always find a reason not to back up your website manually, so it needs to be automated.
4. Update Your Themes and Plugins: According to research, 86% of hacked WordPress websites have outdated plugins or themes or an outdated version of WordPress. This makes sense, as updates often contain fixes for known vulnerabilities or new security features.
To keep the bad guys at bay, it’s wise to regularly check the WordPress dashboard for any available updates.
5. Check the website on multiple devices: As web plugins, browsers, and script libraries are updated, they sometimes cause websites to display incorrectly, so invest a few minutes in reviewing critical pages on a website on a few different devices. (Tablet, Phone, Desktop, Laptop)
6. Check page speed: Your page speed slowed down after your last redesign, but you added a few things that slowed it down. Run it through Google’s Page Speed Insights to ensure it loads fast.
In conclusion, maintaining your Chicago-based small business website involves several essential activities. By consistently performing these maintenance tasks, you can ensure your website runs smoothly and effectively serves your business and customers.
Resource:
https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/complete-website-maintenance-checklist/
https://spartanmedia.com/web-design/website-maintenance/
Disclaimer:
Wherever any material is quoted as sourced from the published text with publishing rights vested in an individual, it is stated that it is a pure quotation and has no intention to claim it as our own.
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