Most business owners pay to have someone build a website, but don’t give a second thought to the maintenance that needs to be done monthly on it. Instead of it being viewed as a necessity, it’s often looked at as optional. By not properly maintaining your site you expose it to a variety of potential problems, such as increasing the likelihood it’ll be hacked, having nonworking links, and decreasing the overall upload speed. All of this will reduce your website’s rankings, and ultimately hurt your business. Below we have listed maintenance areas to consider on your site.
Backups
Website backups provide a way that your site can be completely restored if any problems or a crash occurs. Backups are an essential part of maintaining the long-term health of your website. Automatic backups are going to be the easiest way to do this, but it’s important to regularly test your backups to ensure that they’re functioning properly and that you are backing up your site to multiple different locations. Even though backups are extremely important they are generally neglected by small business owners.
WordPress Updates
WordPress software updates are released on a regular basis. This includes the core of the site along with any plugins you have installed. These updates need to be installed on your website, so it will continue to function properly. Without regularly installing these updates, you run the risk of having code conflicts and elements of your site becoming out-of-date. This leaves your site more open to hackers and it won’t function as efficiently as it could have otherwise.
Comments and Spam
Comment spam are usually bot-generated comments that have a backlink to another site attached. These comments are very general, don’t relate to your article, and add no value. The best way to deal with comment spam is by preventing it from happening on the front end. Having anti-spam measures set up will help to prevent a ton of spam comments from invading your site. This typically is done by using the captcha anti-spam links.
Optimizing Your Database
Database optimization is the strategy of reducing your database system response time. If you have a busy site with a high traffic volume and a lot of content continually being uploaded, your database could probably use a regular clean-up. By maintaining your database you’re essentially cleaning out your website’s cobwebs, which will help to improve your loading speeds and reduce the frequency of database errors. The smoother your website runs the longer people will stay on it and check out what you have to offer.
Conclusion
Providing regular maintenance on your site is essential to growing your business. Simply intending to maintain your site won’t be enough; you actually have to do the work yourself or hire a company like MK Marketing Services to do it for you. The best way to stay on top of things is to create a maintenance plan that fits into your schedule. Whether you’re doing the work yourself or hiring us to handle it, keeping a well maintained website is a necessity in your business and needs to be treated as such.
