Maintaining your website is an important aspect of your business’ online presence. A website that is outdated can result in not only loss of conversions and website traffic and but also a decrease in organic search result rankings. Below we have some tips for your website maintenance to always keep in mind.
Website Maintenance Tips
- Choose a content management system (CMS). Our content management system of choice is WordPress, which allows us to easily update website’s pages and blog posts while managing galleries.
- Be consistent in keeping your CMS up to date. Ensure you’re consistently updated with the newest versions. By using WordPress, you’re notified when a new version is released and you’re able to update with just a few clicks!
- Keep plugins up to date & remove any plugins that aren’t in use as outdated plugins can increase the possibility of hacking. It is important to ensure the versions of plugins are compatible with your version of the content management system.
- Browse your website as a customer. Utilize an incognito window, completely logged out of your CMS and peruse your pages as if you were a potential customer. Is it easy to navigate? Any broken links? Look for things that you look for when on other websites.
- Update content frequently. Not only does this aid in the organic search engine ranking, it also gives customers – potential and existing – new things to view on your website. Tip: A great way to build fresh content is with the use of a blog. Post weekly tips, client testimonials or the latest news on your industry.
- Verify your website in Google’s Webmaster Tools. Webmaster Tools will give you an insight on broken pages, your site speed, keywords users are searching and more. This tool is vital to your website and you don’t want to miss out of information.
- As mentioned in the previous point, utilize Google Page Speed to monitor your website’s page speed and identify ways to make your site faster and more mobile-friendly. Including optimizing images, rearranging the files your website loads first, etc.
- Ensure your tokens for any social media plugins you are using are active. Periodically you may be logged out which would result in empty sections on your website. Tip: Adding share buttons on your website
- Don’t be afraid to refresh the look. New photos, new products. As times change, your website should be able to keep up. Do you have new testimonials you can add, or updated photos of new products? If customers have new things they can look forward to every time they visit your website, it shows that you care about your brand and your services.
Maintaining your website is sometimes a task put onto the back burner. It is important to keep your content management system and plugins up to date, monitor your website’s health and create fresh content. For assistance with maintaining your website, give us a call today.