What is Website Maintenance and How Does it Help?

First impressions mean everything—users will make up their mind about your website in just a couple of seconds.

If there are broken links, slow loading times, old widgets, and dated content, those impressions may mean they never return.

If you build it, they might come, but if you don’t update it, they will probably leave.

That’s where website maintenance comes in.

What is Website Maintenance?

Website maintenance is simply the process of keeping your site updated.

You’ve probably seen maintenance notices on major websites in the past. As frustrating as they can be when you’re trying to chat, shop, or browse, they’re an important piece of the puzzle and one that keeps users happy in the long run.

There are many elements at play here, and organizations need to keep multiple plates in the air, so they will often hire third-party service providers to conduct maintenance on their behalf.

What Does Website Maintenance Include?

Website maintenance can involve regular minor updates, such as fixing links and keeping apps updated, as well as more complex overhauls when new systems are implemented.

A checklist for website maintenance may look something like this:

Update Plugins

It has been estimated that over 30,000 sites are hacked every day, and over 40% of them run WordPress. Of those hacks, nearly 95% exploit vulnerabilities in plugins.

WordPress might be the biggest issue, but it’s far from the only one.

Hackers can create backdoors in various plugins, scripts, and other add-ons. Luckily, these exploits are often spotted and fixed quickly, but if you’re not updating your add-ons, you’re not benefiting from those updates and could be exposed.

Fix Links

You might be updating your plugins and paying attention to your site security, but what about the sites you’ve linked in your articles?

They may have been hacked, in which case you could be linking to an unsafe domain controlled by malicious actors.

There is also a chance that those sites were sold and are under new ownership.

Companies buy sites and dropped domains all of the time, often for the purposes of redirecting the domain to boost the authority of another website.

Relevancy and authority are both essential for good SEO,. If you’re not updating links on a regular basis, you could be inadvertently associating with sites that have been—or will be—penalized by Google, as well as ones that are completely irrelevant to your niche.

Either way, it’s bad for business!

Update Content

Is your content still relevant?

It’s hard to create a truly evergreen piece of content. Laws, rules, and situations change all of the time, as do tastes and trends.

What you published a year or even six months ago might not be relevant today.

So, if you still want your users to find and read that content, check in regularly to keep it updated.

Not only will you be giving your users fresh content, but it could also help you with your SEO strategies, as Google prioritizes helpful, accurate, and regularly updated content.

Improve Content

In addition to staying fresh, content should also be checked for errors, such as typos and formatting issues.

If you run a B2C or B2B company and provide helpful advice via guides and blogs, you should come across as a trusted expert, a professional. If your content is riddled with mistakes and looks like it was penned by an amateur who knows little to nothing about the topic in question, those trust levels will drop, and you’ll lose potential customers as a result.

Google is also constantly changing its algorithm, and if these changes impact your search rankings, you should be ready to adapt your content quickly to avoid losing too much ground.

Check Website Speed

Updates, hosting changes, and new additions can slow down a site to the point where users lose interest and leave.

The average user will leave a website that takes longer than 3 seconds to load, and they don’t have the patience to wait for embedded videos or images to load.

Run regular speed checks to ensure your site’s pages are loading quickly. If not, optimize images and scripts, and consider methods such as lazy loading, which only loads page elements when they are needed.

Create Backups

If you’re posting new content on a regular basis and making frequent updates, you should check that your site is being properly updated.

Automatic backups can do some of the work, but they also need to be checked to confirm that those backups are complete and correct.

Audit SEO Issues

There are many elements of SEO, including internal/external links, keywords, page speed, bounce rate, tags, and content relevancy.

All of these things change regularly and must be checked.

Look for areas that could be improved, such as articles that need to be updated, links that should be added/removed, and keywords that could be targeted for improved rankings.

How Much Does Website Maintenance Cost?

The cost of website maintenance can vary based on numerous factors:

• The complexity of the site, including the use of plugins and scripts
• The scope of the work, such as the size of the blog and the number of areas that need to be checked
• The amount of checks/updates required
• The size of the team performing the updates (individuals, small agencies, or large providers)
• Additional services (SEO audits,  hosting, web development)

However, it is nearly always a cost-effective approach.

Website maintenance is resource heavy. As discussed above, there are many elements to consider, and the average business owner may struggle to handle these themselves.

They have better things to do with their time and also lack the expertise offered by a specific website maintenance service.

Maintenance Doesn’t Mean Growth

Finally, and it’s important to stress this point: website maintenance doesn’t equate to growth. It can be a side effect of proper maintenance, though, as it enhances the user experience, keeps content updated, and could direct more visitors to your site while also increasing conversions.

These are secondary, though, and the main goal is to stay relevant and competitive.