It is easy to get caught up in business and simply forget that you need to take care of your website. The truth is that websites can break and things can go terribly wrong. If you aren’t checking on them regularly to make sure that they are functioning properly, you may find yourself in a mess. To prevent such site setbacks, doing some website maintenance cleanups each month can go a long way.
Before you start messing with any site files and settings, you need to make sure that you have a backup. Make sure to use only the best WordPress backup plugins since this is a very important part of the process. If your site doesn’t back up properly and you have a problem, you could potentially lose all of your data.
The more downtime that your site has, the worse it looks on you. If you have potential clients come to view your site and they are ready to make a buying decision, your website being down could cost you big bucks. This is why it is so important for you to check through your site on a monthly basis or even a weekly basis. Having your backups set to automatic is your safest bet when you want to ensure that your backups are in order.
While having someone that primarily takes care of your site is ideal, it is understandable that all businesses are not at a place to be able to do this. So, scheduling a little website maintenance time is a must.
1. Audit your content
Your website content should be top of the line. If you leave typos in your content or outdated information, this does not look good for your site. Go through each page of your site and make sure your content is up to date. You can copy and paste the content from your website into a Word doc so that you aren’t distracted with the fancy formatting.
Even if your writing is correct, you might want to edit it to sound more inviting to site visitors. You can often improve on older writing after letting it sit for a while. Doing a content audit will give your visitors a better user experience, but it will also give you peace of mind that everything is in order.
2. Check for broken links
If you link to a lot of different sites or do a good job at interlinking, you may get some broken links from time to time. If you have migrated your site from one server to another, it is likely that something is awry in your site so make sure you take some extra time to comb through the links after a migration or if you are using WordPress, you can use the broken link checker plugin and allow it to do the work for you.
Having broken links on your site is a bad user experience and it will hurt your SEO. Make sure to replace any broken links with a valuable link since linking to high authority site helps your site.
3. Check site speed
If you have a slow site, you need to get to work on optimizing it for speed right away. This is especially true when you are looking at mobile websites. People do not want to wait for their search results, and slow load times not only irritate site visitors, but can also affect your rank in search engines.
Google says that a site should load in 3 seconds or less for the best results with searchers. Now we also know officially that speed is playing a role in how Google is going to position you in the search results.
4. Delete duplicate & spam comments
If you don’t watch your site’s comment section, it can get a little crazy in there. Sometimes an error will occur and multiple comments will be approved when you meant to send them to spam or you reply to something twice. Whatever it might be, make sure that you are careful as you are looking through your comments. If you accidentally approved a spam comment, it’s best to delete it right away.
5. Delete plugins you don’t need
Different plugins pull different amounts of bandwidth. If your plugin is slowing your load times down, it may be a good idea to deactivate the plugin if you don’t need it. If it is an important plugin like a contact form, search around for a better plugin with good reviews from developers.
Make sure that any plugin you download is a reputable plugin. If you download a bad plugin or even a plugin that has not been updated, you can cause some serious problems in your website. When you go to the plugin page to download it make sure to check the stats and see what it says about updates.
In Sum: Website maintenance prevents problems
Doing these website cleanups on a monthly basis will ensure that your site is running smoothly and that you are able to put your best foot forward. There are plenty of things to think about as you are working on your WordPress site and even though some website maintenance tasks might get boring or tedious, they are necessary and will save you a lot of work and heartache in the long run.
