Website Maintenance Checklist – 10 Things To Do Weekly
Much like having a car or a house, your website needs regular attention in order for it to work well for you.
Below we provide a short checklist for you:
1. Check your Google Analytics report to see how many visitors you are getting. And see where do people enter and leave your website – work out why they leave that page. This Google Analytics 4 tool is FREE.
2. Add useful fresh relevant content, written or graphic, to keep your website interesting and show authority in your subject area.
3. Curate your existing content, to keep it up to date and useful and attracting the right audience. Read it and update it continually.
4. Check for 404s – dead links, empty pages etc, as they will affect your Google ranking and performance, as well as annoy visitors. Use a FREE tool such as Screaming Frog, Ahrefs or Broken Link Check. In order to visualizs a 404 page, imagine walking through the front door of a shop and finding yourself outside the back door immediately – nothing there and no engagement.
5. Apply any website platform software updates, such as WordPress to maintain security and website uptime – check any warning messages or emails from your website.
6. Apply any design theme updates, to avoid conflict between the design theme and other plugins, such as the Contact Form or your SEO tool.
7. Carry out any updates for any plugins to ensure that they all work and do not cause any conflict. Delete any that are not being used. Otherwise they will slow down your website.
8. Test your website load speed – a slow site will rank poorly and lose visitors. Aim for under 3 seconds. We recommend trying a FREE tool such as Pingdom, Web Page Test or preferably Google Speed Insights. After all it is Google that will determine where you will rank in its search engine. You want to rank in the 90s for mobile and for desktop.
9. Check your contact form, to see what happens if someone tries to contact you – send yourself a test enquiry every week.
10. Find out where your website ranks in Google search for your key terms and continually tweak your SEO until you get to the top of page 1 in organic results. Check this using an Incognito Window. Then work to stay there. If you are not number 1 or 2 on page 1, then you have some work to do. To help with this, we recommend you check out our blog on What is SEO?
Remember: Check how the website looks on a mobile view – use this FREE Google Tool.
What do I need to do weekly to ensure my website is effective?
Just like having a bricks and mortar shop you will need to maintain your website and its content, to ensure that it works well, performs well and delivers results. Do measure your progress towards your targets. Also, aim for top of page 1 in organic search for your key words or key terms. Check this using an Incognito Window.
This does take time, but with continuous momentum you will get there. As a result, we recommend that every month or ideally every week, you put a note in your diary to review your website performance. If someone else is doing all the work on the list, ask to see the results of that investment, get a regular monthly report and plan how to make improvements.
In the current post covid climate, the website is your window to the world. Consequently, people will be visiting your website in higher numbers now. Or they should be doing so. Otherwise they will be visiting somebody else in higher numbers. If your website is not working smoothly, these visitors will go elsewhere.
Obviously, the website reflects on you as a business.
Does it look professional?
Is it fast?
How good is the design?
Is it easy to navigate and get answers to logical questions?
Do you clearly state which problems you solve and for whom?
Does your website look like it is up to your own personal standards?
Does it actually generate any enquiries?
Does it actually generate any ‘good‘ enquiries?
