The importance of a website for any size of business cannot be overstated here in this day and age. A website would greatly enhance the online visibility of your business and also influence greatly the perception of the value of your product or service brand.
There are a number of reasons why website maintenance is important to your business. These reasons include maintaining higher search engine rankings, present new information, and to attract and preserve customers.Website maintenance can greatly help in fixing associated problems including badly spelled text, broken links and unanswered feedback. Subsequently, below are some of the different types of Website Maintenance.
I. Website software update
Third party software for example Joomla, ecommerce software and WordPress often update their software automatically. But there are some instances where you have to update manually.
In case you are using a website host, the provider of the service must ensure that regularly the core server software is updated. If you happen to run your own web server then of course you will have to test and apply the updates manually.
The updates installed often are accompanied by new features and also help in improving your security, fixing any possible vulnerability issues.
II. Backing up of files
It often happens and it is always frustrating when you lose the essential files of your website including blog posts, plugins and images. That happens just because you did not take a few minutes to backup files.
Website maintenance will ensure that at least once a week that the website’s file and database are backed up automatically.
III. Developing new content
While your content strategy may be great, it is always advised that new content that is relevant to the present times must continually be developed. For example, a great content published months or a year ago may not be appropriate to the present situation and information may need to be updated.
IV. Fixing Broken links
Often though every website link should lead you to the desired content, sometimes it just doesn’t work and it can be frustrating.
The broken or changed links occur because of changes implemented within the site or in outside resources. Broken or changed links are not great for your business as it tends to give the customer the impression that:
· Your business is not credible
· Your website is not accessible
· You are not responsible to update your website regularly
V. Review website analytics
The monitoring of the traffic stats of your website should be done by a professional website maintenance services to make sure that everything is working properly. With the information gathered, one can then implement the necessary adjustments.
Website analytics will provide various information including bounce rate,time spent on the site,pages visitors entered on and left on and visitor geographical location.
Google Analytics or installing a website stats program will provide you the necessary information.
VI. Search Engine Optimization
Most customers tend to click the search results displayed on the first page and particularly those ranked higher.
For your website to be able to be ranked higher, you must improve greatly its ability to be searched. That can be achieved by implementing the use of popular and competitive keywords on your blog posts, landing pages, and across all related pages to your set of keywords.
It is therefore crucial that when you are creating content for your website that you do a thorough keyword research. Find out more about our SEO services, SEO on Magento websites, Why SEO & information about our SEO consultants.
VII. Monitor website outages and the speed
Sometimes your site may go down due to a number of factors and you should be able to place yourself in the position that allows you to be the first to notice that. It does not promote your brand greatly if you have to be notified that your site cannot be accessed for you to be able to correct that.
Additionally, most of the times visitors to a website often have a short attention span. For that reason, your business will be in trouble if your site is taking longer to load as the visitor will not wait.