The Importance of Website Maintenance

Why maintain?

 
Once you’ve got a professional website up and running, it can be easy to feel like you’ve got it made, to kick back and let the site work its magic. But you shouldn’t underestimate the importance of website maintenance in contributing to your site’s security, success, speed and longevity.

Because your website is the most important part of how your business is presented to the world, the way you maintain it (if you do) is not only invaluable for your business’s visibility, but for your own peace of mind as well.

It can feel like site maintenance is not something that you need – that is, until you do, and by then it can be too late. Think of it like your car: you wouldn’t buy a car and then never change the oil, or take it for routine maintenance, would you?

Here are just a few of the reasons why site maintenance is important:

• Security

   
  Protecting your website is probably the most important reason to be running regular maintenance. You may feel like your website is too small to be hacked, but just because you’re not running Solar Winds, it doesn’t mean you’re not vulnerable. In fact, Verizon’s 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report found that in that year, small businesses comprised 28% of all hacking victims.

  Software patches, coding and modules are constantly being updated, and if your site is out-of-date in these respects, it is vulnerable to attack. Hackers can easily see if you are running an older version of WordPress, and if you are, you can be targeted. Regular WordPress updates and security monitoring are good ways to combat the threat of malware and hacking, and daily site backups can help you ensure that if anything ever does happen, your site can be quickly and easily reinstated.

 

• User Experience

   
  The state of your website says a lot about how engaged you are with your business, and how well it’s doing. Often, when visitors happen upon a site whose last content update was months ago, they’re likely to leave and move on to the next one. Updating your site with the most recent information and removing out-of-date content will engage new page visitors and keep your existing customers wanting more.

  Site maintenance is also instrumental for the functionality of the user experience. WordPress software and plugins need to be updated regularly, and old versions will result in slower load times and a generally less seamless UX. Combine that with a site that has old content, broken links, broken page layouts, and not only is your site unattractive, but it will result in lower rankings for your SEO.

 

• SEO and Traffic

   
  Search engines like Google rank websites according to, among other things, how frequently the content is updated. Updating regularly with new content, keywords, blogs, articles and the like is a great way to boost those rankings. Google also ranks for sites that are fast and highly functional, as mentioned above, so maintaining your site for a premium user experience has the double benefit of improving your SEO as well.

 

• Peace of Mind

   
  Building your business and your website is a big investment, and you owe it to yourself to see that all you’ve put into it is able to flourish. Website maintenance is a simple way to quiet the nagging worry that your site could be hacked; a way to rest easy knowing that you are giving your users the best experience possible; and a way to ensure you are truly caring for your business by giving it the relevance and longevity that it deserves. Like an old reliable automobile – care for it, and it will care for you!

Maintain with Millennial

Millennial Web Development offers a monthly maintenance package that includes all of the following starting at $79 a month:

• WordPress version updates (weekly)
• Plugin version updates (weekly)
• Website backups (daily)
• Performance monitoring (daily)
• Security monitoring (daily)

These updates help ensure your website remains up-to-date with the latest technology and helps keep your site safe from malware and hacking. If you’re interested in going far with your website, get in touch with Millennial Web Development today.