If you own a business, your website is likely the most crucial marketing tool. Your website's
effectiveness will impact the user experience, and the time your users/customers spend on your
website.
Low maintenance can be a factor in high bounce rate, un-satisfied users, and security issues,
but it doesn't have to be that way.
As one of the top-rated website design companies in Florida, we want to share with you some
helpful tips for keeping your site running smoothly so you can enjoy all the benefits of having a
strong online presence:
Perform Monthly Basic Maintenance:
You spent money to build your website and are spending on marketing; you should consider
web maintenance too. Once every month or so, make sure to perform some essential
maintenance on your website.
Check for any broken links and scan for coding errors, which may affect your page's loading
time. These two things alone can affect the user experience and SEO performance of your
website.
If you use a static HTML site, it is important to make sure that your webmaster or web designer
has developed the site in a way that makes updating easy.
If you use a CMS such as WordPress, you will have to check monthly for:
Update to the latest WordPress version:
WordPress is a CMS that gets updated regularly, at the moment of writing this article, the latest
version is 5.6.2, and during March/April, the WordPress 5.7 version will be released. We
suggest keeping your WordPress CMS updated.
The process of updating to the latest version is easy; you can do it with just one click by going to
the Updates notification on your WordPress Dashboard and then click Update Now.
Suppose you don't have prior experience developing WordPress websites. In that case, we
suggest looking for help from a professional web developer or web design agency because the upgrade process will affect all the files and folders. And if you don't want to lose everything with a click. Always make sure to back-up your WordPress site before updating to the latest
WordPress version.
Update to the latest PHP Version
Every now and then, you will get a notice to update your version of PHP, but did you know that
updating your PHP version can dramatically improve the performance of WordPress? The latest
PHP version is 8.0; studies show that the new version is faster, more secure and resource friendly.
Updating your PHP version to the latest version will drastically improve your site load speed and
your site security.
Regularly update your Plugins:
WordPress is running smoothly, and everything is working correctly, BUT...eventually, a plugin update will show up, and you have to do it. Plugins are a crucial component of WordPress websites. As time goes on, all plugins need to be updated to ensure they're working correctly with the latest WordPress version you have installed on your website.
Update your WordPress Theme to the latest version
Updating your WordPress theme is essential for security, optimization and new features. It's necessary to keep your WordPress theme up-to-date as cybercriminals target out of date themes every day. This way, your site will be secure, have the latest features available from the theme, and drastically improve the performance.
Test Your Site Speed
As one of the factors that affect both your users' experience on your website and Google's WEB
Vitals, site speed is something that you should check regularly. If you notice that your site is
taking a long time to load, use Google Speed Insight or GTmetrix to get performance reports for
your website and fix what needs fixing.
If you see that your site speed is low, you can contact your developer or contact one of our web
developers to improve your site speed. Ensure your page loading speed is fast enough so users
won't be tempted to click away from your site before it loads completely.
Regularly update your content:
Your website is growing and working great, but do you find that it's becoming boring? There
comes the point where visitors start to get tired of the same content and looking for more.
A serious website needs to be updated with fresh content regularly. It can be in forms of:
- Blog Posts
- News
- Images
- Projects
- Case-studies
- Videos
Audit Your SEO:
If you are an online business that relies on organic search to drive traffic and leads, you'll want
to perform an SEO audit regularly. At its core, an SEO audit is nothing more than an analysis of
your website and how well it is optimized for its target keywords. However, the task seems
overwhelming for many people who don't know where to start, but it is not that complicated. It is
a relatively straightforward process if you know what to look for and how to check the key
aspects of your website's health.
Our SEO specialists suggest a few key aspects to audit on your website:
Keyword Rankings
It is essential to look after your keyword rankings and check if your website ranks for important keywords that bring targeted traffic. Keywords may change time-to-time, so always make sure to control your keywords by using tools such as Ahrefs, SemRush, or BrightLocal.Analyze your content:
Your content is the main important part of your website. Having high-quality content will help your website grow both in terms of organic traffic and sales. Always make sure to check if your content is up to date.Remove broken links and 404 errors:
A critical component to improving your website's conversion rate is to minimize broken links and 404 errors. If your site faces technical issues such as broken links, it can drive users away from your site. To find broken links on your website, use professional SEO tools such as Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, or SEMRush, or you can leverage Google Search Console to find potential broken links on your site. The DeadLinkChecker website will also allow you to find some of your broken links, it's free, and we suggest taking a look.Regularly analyze your Google Analytics.
You can learn lots of useful things from analyzing your Google Analytics in detail, and it's really easy to set up. Most of us have implemented Google Analytics to monitor traffic and gather data on our visitors. However, many of us don't analyze this data regularly. We suggest consistently auditing your Analytics at least once per month and see how your traffic is performing.Find out what is the most popular content on your site.
You can do many things with Google Analytics, from checking your conversions to finding the most popular content. Analytics can help you drastically to improve your website. Knowing what content on your site is the most popular is essential if you want to engage your audience. Our SEO specialists suggest businesses in Florida take advantage of analytics and find the most popular content on their website. Once you find the most popular content, you can create similar topics, so you keep your audience updated with the trends they are interested in.Audit your Google reviews
If you want to give your local business a boost, then getting reviews from customers will help. Google Reviews are vital for local businesses, but not always reviews are positive. Our team suggests making sure to audit your Google reviews and respond to clients; whether it is a 5-star review or a 1 star one, always show that you care for your clients.Mobile Friendliness
Google has a tool to test the mobile-friendliness of a site on the web that shows how mobile-friendly the site is. Take advantage of it and audit your site responsiveness every 3-6 months.Run a backlink check
How many backlinks do you have? How many backlinks do your competitors have? Do you know where these backlinks are coming from? These are all questions you can answer by running a backlink check. There are a lot of backlink checkers available for free online. We suggest the Ahrefs backlink checker.Remember, you don't have to audit all the suggested aspects every month. If you have an SEO company that does your SEO, they will take care of it, but it is important to know that auditing your SEO will help keep consistency on your SEO Performance.
Regularly check the Browser Compatibility of your Website:
You already know that different browsers render websites differently. Your website may look
fine in one browser, but all messed up in another. Browser compatibility is important because for
a user to see your web page correctly, their browser must match the one you are using. If there
is a misfire and the browser is not compatible with the web page, the browser cannot properly
display the information. Ensure that your website is working correctly in browsers such as
Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari.
Maintaining your website is essential. You can either do it on your own or hire a professional
freelancer or agency to do so. In case you are looking to get professional help from a top-rated
web agency in West Palm Beach, contact us today for a free website audit.