Lúgh Studio’s Ultimate Guide To Website Maintenance

With more people than ever online, website maintenance is more important than it’s ever been. Your website is an essential part of your overall plan. It’s likely the first online interaction somebody has with your organization, and a chance to make a good first impression. 

Website maintenance is how you ensure this first impression is a good one. Neglect it, however, and you will drive people away with a poor user experience.

Our latest ultimate guide shows you everything you need to know about maintaining your website. We’ve kept it as actionable as possible, and have also included a downloadable link for the PDF version.

• What Is Website Maintenance?
• 4 Reasons Website Maintenance Is Important
• 12 Tips For Website Maintenance
• 6 Things to Keep in Mind
• Resources
• Conclusion

Let’s get started!

Download your PDF version of this guide here.

What Is Website Maintenance?

Let’s first start with what “website maintenance” actually means. While the term can mean different things for different organizations, it’s usually referred to as the set of tasks that are necessary to make a website smooth and efficient. This regular maintenance ensures that a website remains secure, functional, and relevant to its audience.

As for specific reasons why website maintenance is so crucial? Let’s check out four of the most important reasons website maintenance needs to be a priority at your organization.

4 Reasons Website Maintenance Is Important

Website maintenance isn’t just about fixing problems as they arise – it’s also about preventing issues before they become serious. Here are just four of the reasons website maintenance is so essential. 

1) Security

Regular website maintenance helps to identify and fix security vulnerabilities. This helps to reduce the risk of cyber-attacks. That’s especially important as cyber threats constantly evolve. Also, because web security has taken on a higher priority among your users over the years, website maintenance has become even more important. If you want to ensure that you build a trustworthy and secure site, website maintenance is a must.

2) User Experience

As we will mention numerous times throughout this post, good user experience is essential. And what better way to ensure a quality user experience than a healthy and functioning website? Regular updates and maintenance keep your website enjoyable to use. This not only helps retain visitors, but encourages return visits as well. 

3) SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important things to focus on at your organization. Good SEO practices are how people find you online. They also have a “snowball effect” when multiplied over years. Unfortunately, if you neglect website maintenance, it’s going to have a negative impact on your SEO. 

However, the opposite is also true. The natural effects of consistent website maintenance (fast loading time, secure pages, and a quality user experience) are the exact factors that search engines look for when ranking websites highly.

4) Brand Image

Lastly (but certainly not least), website maintenance contributes to a good brand image among your audience.  A well-maintained website reflects positively on your brand. It shows that you care about your online presence, as well as the experience you provide to your users. Remember this: brand image is important regardless of your type of organization. Just another reason website maintenance is essential!

12 Tips For Website Maintenance

Website maintenance, as important as it is, doesn’t necessarily have to be complicated. In fact, some of the most important things you can do for a well-maintained website come down to regular tasks. Curious what those are? Let’s look at twelve of them.

1) Test Website Functionality

You can’t know that your website maintenance is lacking something if you never actually measure it. That’s why regular testing is essential. Make sure you are regularly testing all website features and functionalities. This includes any forms you use, your various checkout processes, as well as any possible broken links. You might also consider testing load times as well as server response times. 

2) Monitor Website Uptime

You need to know if your site goes down. This is where monitoring tools come into play. These tools allow you to keep track of your website’s uptime and get alerts if your site malfunctions. Think of your own online activity. If you’ve ever come across a website that was done, there’s a good chance it negatively impacted your opinion of an organization. This is why step #2 is so essential.

3) Regularly Schedule Common Maintenance

Just like our first point, regular maintenance is also important. Set a regular schedule for performing maintenance tasks. This could be weekly, monthly, or quarterly, depending on the size and complexity of your website. Those tasks can include refreshing content, adding visuals to more pages, or keeping an eye on search rankings.

4) Optimize Images

A truly well-maintained website is a fast one. That said, there are many quite common website elements that have a tendency to slow them down. One of the biggest culprits? Slow loading images. The fact is, images that load fast and cleanly are absolutely essential for website speed. Be sure to compress and optimize images to improve loading times without compromising quality.

5) Conduct Security Audits

With how important web security is, you need to ensure you are testing it. And not just every now and then when your team finds the time, but consistently and properly. This is the only way to identify and fix vulnerabilities. Be sure to implement measures such as SSL certificates, firewall protection, and secure password practices. This is how you keep the web experience secure for your audience. Also ensure your website’s privacy policies and terms of service are up to date with current regulations and practices.

6) Optimize for Mobile

As we have discussed numerous times on our blog, mobile optimization is crucial. A significant portion of traffic comes from mobile users. Because of that, it’s important that your website is fully responsive and optimized for mobile devices. Check out this guide for everything you need to be taking care of.

7) Content Updates

Content marketing is likely an essential part of your overall marketing plan. And if it’s not yet – it should be! Unfortunately, content is one of the most overlooked aspects of web maintenance. It’s not enough to put some content on your website and forget about it. Regularly updating your website’s content ensures it remains relevant and engaging.

8) SEO Optimization

As we mentioned earlier, SEO is an essential part of website maintenance. Neglect this, and it will have a negative impact on the rest of your efforts. So – where do you start? While SEO can be a confusing area for many organizations, there are a few actions that you can take for quick wins: 

• Updating meta tags
• Improving site speed
• Checking for broken links

There are many tools that can help you with these three actions. That said, Ahrefs is one of the best and most user-friendly software solutions out there.

9) Software Updates

If you’ve been following along, you’ve seen that there are tons of actions you can take for better website maintenance. That said, none of that matters much if you aren’t keeping your software up-to-date. There are likely tons of software that you use connected to your website. While this can make your organization more profitable and improve your overall user experience, it’s also a big risk if you don’t perform proper upkeep. Check out this guide for everything you need to know.

10) Analytics Review

Analytics are yet another area you need to make sure you are on top of. The difference here is that data doesn’t lie. Follow analytics and specific KPIs like you should, and you will gain insights into your website as a whole. This can help you in numerous areas. From understanding user behavior, to seeing how different landing pages perform, analytics are essential.

11) Review User Feedback

Even though going in-depth with the first ten points can bring great results for your overall website maintenance, sometimes the simplest solution is also the best. In this case, we mean listening to your users. These peoples’ feedback can highlight areas that need improvement that you would have missed on your own. It can also shed light on bigger issues that you might have overlooked.

12) Stay Informed

Our last tip is all about learning. True website maintenance requires constant education. Yes, there are best practices that rarely change, and yes, what we’ve mentioned so far is a great foundation to work with. Still, things change. If you want your website maintenance to stay effective, you should keep up with the latest trends and best practices. Be sure to check out the “Resources” section for more information.

6 Things To Keep In Mind

We’ve gone over website maintenance specifics. Now let’s dive into bigger picture ideas that can positively contribute to your website maintenance

These are more general things you should consider when it comes to website maintenance. Treat these as higher level tips for ensuring your website maintenance is exactly where it should be. 

1) Consistency is key

Regular maintenance is more effective than sporadic updates. Consistent efforts help to prevent significant issues and ensure continuous improvement. They are also more likely to reveal issues that need addressing. 

It’s simply not good enough if your website “usually” works. Solid website maintenance results in a website that works 99%+ of the time. The key to making this a reality? Simple consistency.

2) User experience first

Like we mentioned in our section on tips, user experience should be a type of “guiding light” for you. Your end users are the ones that matter. You can have an idea in mind, and if it’s not going to have a positive influence on how your audience uses your website, it’s likely not worth it.

It’s simple but true: always prioritize user experience in your maintenance efforts. Does a certain software make it easier to use your website? It’s worth considering. Is that same software going to needlessly complicate things? Best to forget it.

3) Security cannot be compromised

When it comes to website maintenance, security should always be a top priority. Nothing matters much if your website security fails. If this happens, the trust you’ve spent years building up can disappear in an instant.

Like we point out above, there are a number of actions you can take to ensure your website security is constantly maintained. Regularly update software, use strong passwords, and perform security checks to protect your website and its data. 

4) Backups are essential

You never know what’s going to happen. Websites can be hacked or compromised in a variety of ways. You can also accidentally edit your website in a way you don’t actually want. 

This is why regular backups are crucial. Make sure that you have a reliable backup strategy in place for the worst case scenario. You should also test it extensively to ensure that it works when needed! This is one of the most important steps to regular website maintenance.

5) Automate where possible

Like many aspects of running a business or nonprofit, web maintenance can benefit greatly from automation. People are fallible. As dependable as your team might be, they are still liable to make mistakes. People are busy, and tasks that are essential to website maintenance can easily slip through the cracks.

This is where automation comes in. This is actually quite easy to do. There are tons of automation tools that allow you to easily streamline routine maintenance tasks. This can include everything from automated backups to periodic software updates.

6) Professional help may be necessary

As useful as this ultimate guide is, some of our suggestions are a bit more technical. If you want to take full advantage of everything we suggest, you might need additional help. 

This is a nonissue if you have a developer on your team. If you don’t, though, you might consider hiring professional help for maintenance tasks. Thankfully, they aren’t too difficult (or even expensive) to find. Check out sites like Upwork and Fiverr for affordable professional help. 

Resources

Lastly, let’s dive into some of the best resources for website maintenance. While our guide is a good place to start, website maintenance is a constantly evolving topic. Treat the resources below as your “go to” list for all things website maintenance. 

• Google Search Console
  A free tool to monitor and maintain your website’s presence in Google Search results. It helps identify issues and provides insights into your website’s performance.
• GTmetrix
  A website performance monitoring tool that provides detailed reports on your website’s speed and suggests improvements.
• Sucuri
  This website security platform offers website monitoring, malware removal, and general protection services.
• UpdraftPlus
  A popular backup plugin for WordPress that simplifies the backup and restore process.
• Yoast SEO
  The most popular SEO plugin for WordPress that helps optimize your website for search engines.
• WPScan
  A security scanner for WordPress that helps identify vulnerabilities and security issues.

Conclusion

Website maintenance is a critical aspect of managing your online presence successfully. By regularly performing maintenance tasks, you can ensure your website remains secure, performs optimally, and provides a positive user experience. 

We hope you’ve enjoyed our guide. As always, let us know if you have any questions, and good luck with your own website maintenance!

Download your PDF version of this guide here.

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Are you an enterprise, nonprofit or small business looking for help on your website? Give us a shout! We provide a free consultation. Email us at info@lughstudio.com or call us at (718) 855-1919!