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Running a successful website means taking good care of it.
This involves updating your content, checking your links work, making sure it’s fast and accessible… and the list goes on and on.
You can’t overlook website maintenance, either. A poorly maintained site is at high risk of hacking and malware, visitor exits, and dwindling search rankings.
Help is at hand! Below, we explore:
- What website maintenance is in practice
- How to maintain your site
- Why maintenance is so important
- What you can expect to pay for maintenance
- The different support routes available
What Is Website Maintenance?
Website maintenance is the set of essential tasks that help keep a site secure, efficient, and accessible for all users. Typical maintenance jobs include refreshing content, backing up data, optimizing site design, and fixing errors. The ultimate goal of website maintenance is to build a positive user experience, or UX, to retain visitors and convert them into customers.
Believe it or not, a poor user experience on a website turns away 88% of online consumers, so regular maintenance is a non-negotiable consideration for online business growth.
What is included in website maintenance?
So, what is included in website maintenance? Typical tasks are:
- Backing up your data
- Managing your site security
- Updating software
- Refreshing content
- Checking performance
- Adjusting SEO (search engine optimization) strategies
- Repairing website errors
- Fixing broken links
- Adjusting site accessibility and design
Let’s explore these crucial maintenance tasks in more detail.
How To Do Website Maintenance: 9 Key Tasks and When to Perform Them
Website maintenance tasks vary depending on the size of your site and your business. However, there are some that you should always prioritize.
Some are weekly tasks, while others you should do a few times a year.
For instance, updating your plugins and themes is a regular task that only takes a few minutes. More intensive but less frequent tasks include checking for broken links, updating your content, and tweaking your on-site SEO.
Below, we list nine of the most important website maintenance tasks to plan for. For an even deeper dive, check out our website maintenance checklist.
1. Backing up
Ideal frequency: Once a week
Backing up your website means saving copies of your data so you can reload it later.
Imagine you’re the victim of a hack, or you edit your site and accidentally lose data – without a regular backup to reload, you lose time, money, reputation, and trust.
Around a fifth of computer users never back up their data. When you’re running a business website, that’s a statistic you can’t risk being part of.
Reloading a backup means you can recover data and functionality almost instantly. We suggest you set automatic backups to make things easier on yourself!
2. Securing your site
Ideal frequency: Once a week
Website security is a huge deal for businesses of all sizes. Just consider that the average global cost of corporate data breaches is around$4.9 million.
You should, therefore, take steps such as downloading and running security scanning software to find weaknesses and malware.
For instance, you might:
- Use a program like Sucuri that finds and neutralizes website threats (it has a WordPress malware protection plugin, too).
- Change your passwords and user permissions a couple of times a year.
- Update your website’s software to protect against backdoor hacking or other security issues.
- Check that your site’s SSL certificate, which protects user data, is current. They expire 27 months after being issued.
Some firms, such as Lamano Law, outsource this security management to third-party experts who ensure confidential data is always encrypted and safe. In this case, we’re the experts! 🤓
3. Updating your software
Ideal frequency: Once a week, or whenever necessary
What is a website maintenance plan without running a few updates? If you don’t update regularly, your site’s prone to slow speeds and nasty hacks.
Updating your website’s software ensures it’s running at full speed with the latest features and functions. Thankfully, with site builders such as Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress, it’s as simple as checking update availability and compatibility in your dashboard.
You even have the option to use automatic WordPress updates, so you don’t have to worry about checking WP at all. However, we don’t recommend this because it can lead to unexpected errors that take time and energy to resolve. The best choice is to get an expert to run manual updates after having checked compatibility and potential errors.
Updating is also an important step in protecting against security breaches. Hackers can easily break into websites using outdated software or vulnerable builds.
For WordPress website maintenance, we suggest you run updates on a weekly basis, but always install patches when prompted.
4. Creating and refreshing content
Ideal frequency: Once a month for new content, once a year for a complete audit
Helpful, engaging content establishes you as an authority and improves your chances of being seen regularly in search results. That means an important part of routine maintenance is creating monthly blog posts and having a content strategy in place to establish your place online.
A content refresh or audit is more complicated and should be a less frequent task. It involves checking out your website’s analytics (e.g., with Google Analytics 4) to look at your content performance more closely – which pages are driving the most engagement and converting the most organic traffic? What can you learn from successful pages and drop from poor performers?
Content optimization also means ensuring that what you say is relevant, fresh, and helpful to visitors. If it’s outdated, expect visitors to look elsewhere.
5. Optimizing performance
Ideal frequency: Once a month
Performance optimization means fine-tuning a website so it loads quickly and is accessible across all devices, with a special focus on mobile, which accounts for over half of all traffic.
Testing mobile responsiveness is as simple as accessing your website’s domain from different devices and browsers. Most website builders and content platforms now offer mobile-friendly themes you can adapt to smaller screens. Beyond this, check your bounce rates and site speed on a monthly basis using a tool such as GTMetrix, which can break down what’s affecting your load times.
Increasing your load speed by just 0.1 seconds could increase retail conversion by around 8.4%, so you won’t want to overlook this step.
You can start boosting your page speeds by reducing the number of images it has to load, using caching plugins, and using a private server.
Check out our full guide to speeding up WordPress sites for more insight.
6. Auditing technical SEO
Ideal frequency: Audit at least twice a year
Search optimization isn’t just about inserting relevant keywords into your content. Technical SEO covers a range of tasks to help Google crawl and index your site in search results more effectively.
Ultimately, that means you get seen by the people you want to do business with more often. You might have a great-looking site with useful content, but Google still needs to crawl it to understand what you do and properly establish you in its search engine rankings.
Typical technical SEO tasks include:
- Building a sitemap to show where pages lead
- Creating relevant URLs
- Ensuring images and pages have relevant and understandable meta tags and descriptions
- Optimizing your page loading speed
- Setting the secure HTTPS protocol
- Set up 301 redirects and account for 404 errors
Technical SEO audits don’t have to be part of your monthly strategy, but it’s wise to incorporate some of the checks across your more frequent maintenance planning.
As the name suggests, running these audits can get technical, so consider using a top SEO plugin or tool to help you manage some of the in-depth checks.
7. Managing errors and hacks
Ideal frequency: Daily
Website errors can take you offline for days if you don’t manage them properly. Unfortunately, popular content management systems like WordPress have common errors that leave even tech-savvy people bamboozled.
Here’s where it pays to have tools such as Sucuri (a malware manager) and Query Monitor (an error reporter) on standby. Both give you expert insight into your site’s technical issues and help point you in the right direction – we recommend running scans and checking reports once a day where possible.
It’s also good practice to check your themes and stylesheets are working properly (which is as simple as test-driving your site in a few different browsers from time to time).
Alternatively, it’s more time- and cost-effective to work with a seasoned maintenance team that acts as a hardened first line of defense.
Take Lead Liberated, a nonprofit that uses StateWP to protect its website. We help the firm with speedy fixes and reassure its team that there’s always an expert keeping an eye on performance.
8. Fixing broken links
Ideal frequency: Once a month
Broken links go nowhere, and visitors are likely to click away if you confuse them with dead ends.
Links can break because you move content or delete posts. Sometimes, you might be unaware of it happening.
That’s why we recommend using plugins like Broken Link Checker if you’re on WordPress. This software makes it easy to account for any dead ends you can fix up fast.
If you’re not using WordPress, no worries – Ahrefs’ SEO Tools help you audit errors and dead-end links regardless of your platform.
9. Adjusting user experience (UX) and redesigning your website
Ideal frequency: Varies, but once every two years for major redesigns
Unless your users demand it, you shouldn’t need to overhaul your website more than once every two years. For example, if there are serious problems with your navigation or mobile experience, you must fix them quickly.
However, refreshing the look of your site with UX in mind helps to keep new visitors coming back and even boosts conversion rates.
Completely redesigning your website can be an arduous task unless you use a basic theme or template. However, if you’re a larger firm, you should partner with a professional designer for a more authentic look and tailored customer experience.
Research suggests you have around 0.05 seconds to make a great visual impression on your visitors – better make the look and accessibility of your site count!
Again, this isn’t something you have to manage alone. Starr King School is another StateWP client that relies on our team for ongoing maintenance. We help the school with quarterly media, fresh content, and database updates to enhance its UX.
Why Is Website Maintenance Important?
We’ve tapped into some of the most common maintenance tasks and mentioned their importance for your website’s health.
But why is website maintenance so important for your overall, ongoing business success?
Here’s a quick summary.
Web maintenance importance: The 5 key points
| Reason | Explanation |
| It keeps your site secure | A well-maintained website is continuously protected against cyber threats like malware, hacking, and data loss. Sucuri claims that the majority of infected WordPress sites are outdated. |
| It improves UX | A website that loads quickly and has clear menus and calls to action engages visitors better. |
| It can boost sales and revenue | Relevant, insightful content and clear signposting convert visitors into paying customers. By minimizing UX problems and responding to feedback, you can keep visitors coming back. |
| It enhances your SEO performance |
SEO maintenance checks show Google you’re authoritative, legitimate, and genuinely help visitors. Auditing speed, content helpfulness, and mobile device responsiveness all help to boost the strength of your SEO strategy. |
| It’s cost-effective |
Regularly maintaining your website means you can bounce back quicker from errors and attacks in the future. For instance, security patches and measures prevent hacking, updating your site reduces errors, and UX enhancements prevent visitors from bouncing. |
What happens if a website is not maintained?
A poorly maintained website develops regular errors, gets hacked easier, falls down Google’s search rankings, and loses interest from visitors and potential customers.
Sucuri found that 36% of all tested compromised sites had vulnerable software. That could’ve been easy to remedy with a few quick updates. What’s more, its study shows over 23% of hacked websites contained hidden tools, which are easily spotted and removed with regular malware scans.
And don’t forget about page speed! Unbounce reports that most site marketers aren’t even thinking about loading times – and yet, almost 70% of online buyers say slow speeds affect their purchasing decisions.
How Much Does Website Maintenance Cost?
The cost of website maintenance depends on the size of your site, the tasks you need to complete, and how you maintain it.
For example, maintaining and fixing a site on your own might seem like the cheapest option, but think about how much time and effort you need to put into regular updates and care. That’s time better spent on actually growing your business.
Other businesses might consider in-house web maintenance. This option, at least, means you have someone on-site to consistently manage your content and UX. However, costs could stretch into multiple thousands of dollars every month simply because you’re paying regular salaries. It only makes sense if you’re a very large business with a lot of capital.
But for 98% of businesses, the most effective option is outsourcing to an agency of off-site experts.
For instance, StateWP offers a Premium website maintenance package that monitors and manages your online presence from $99 per month, charged annually. It offers far more value than a salaried employee, it doesn’t take days off, and it’s scalable for websites of varying sizes. ✅✅✅
The Best Choice for Website Maintenance: Outsource to an Agency of Experts
Outsourcing website maintenance to a team of experienced developers is the most cost-effective and protective option for individuals and SMEs.
By delegating maintenance to an off-site team, you have instant access to expert support around the clock.
That’s not just time you can save on maintaining your site yourself, but also time and money saved on training and employing in-house professionals. 💰
As you can see, there are lots of working parts to website maintenance. When you delegate to an experienced team, there’s always someone who has your back – meaning if a problem occurs, they can handle it for you. Or, if you want to make a specific change, it’s quick and easy to reach out.
Take our client, the Ranchod Law Group – the firm turned to StateWP to completely revitalize its website and take on monthly management tasks. By delegating directly to our experts, the company saw a GTMetrix performance boost from grade E to A and a Google mobile speed score boost from 38 to 94.
What’s more, we’ve updated over 30 plugins and several core files, and regularly publish and update content for the firm. It’s never looked and performed better with visitors.
What Is Website Maintenance? It’s Your Ticket to Long-Term Online Success
Regular website maintenance keeps your site performing at its best, looking great, and engaging well with visitors. That means you stand to increase sales, rank higher on Google’s rankings, and outpace your competition.
However, maintenance activities take a lot of time and effort. Instead, focus more on growing your client base and partner with an expert team such as StateWP – let us manage all the weekly, monthly, and yearly tasks to keep your site ticking over.
Get in touch now to learn more about how we can help, and in the meantime, go ahead and download our complete website maintenance checklist for free!
Save 💸 in prevented threats,
protected sales, and freed time
What Is Website Maintenance: FAQs
Let’s close our guide with some frequently asked questions.
How often is website maintenance required?
You should ideally perform basic website maintenance tasks once a month. However, some maintenance tasks, such as updating your software, managing comments, and running security scans, only take a few minutes – and it’s best to do them once a week where possible. Consider our suggested maintenance schedule to stay on top of things.
Who is responsible for maintaining a website?
The webmaster is responsible for maintaining a website – that might be you! If you run your site as an administrator, it’s your job to ensure it performs at its best. That can mean a lot of regular checks and measures. If you’re handling a website on your own, it might be more efficient to work with a team of expert developers instead.
What are the tasks of maintaining a website?
Common website maintenance tasks include:
- Updating your site’s software
- Backing up your data
- Running security updates and scans
- Writing and refreshing content
- Updating contact forms
- Checking site speeds and making adjustments
- Checking mobile responsiveness
- Managing SEO ranking factors
- Listening to visitor feedback and making changes where needed
- Attending to errors whenever they arise
- Checking for broken links and 404 pages
What is included in a website maintenance package?
A comprehensive website maintenance plan includes:
- Software updates (e.g., core files, plugins, and themes)
- Error and security monitoring
- Backup management and reload
- SSL management and updates
- Hack support and recovery strategies
- Analytics and reports
- Data restoration and disaster recovery
- Performance monitoring and optimization (e.g., page load enhancements)
- Mobile testing and responsive design
- Regular content updates