Why Maintaining Your WordPress Website is so Important
Ok, I admit it, WordPress website maintenance doesn’t sound like the most fascinating thing you could be doing with your time.
But it’s really important because your website is your online shop.
You don’t need the headache of having to deal with a hacked website, a broken site or performance issues.
Benefits of Regular WordPress Website Maintenance
Performing regular, simple maintenance tasks can help keep your WordPress site running smoothly, protected and secure and save you a lot of hassle that you could do without.
Running security updates and simple website maintenance tasks can help to keep your website running seamlessly, so you can focus on your client work.
Keeping your website up to date can also build trust. When you review your website with a critical eye on a regular basis, you get a feel for what’s out of whack.
For example, if you notice there’s no padlock on your website, you can be proactive and get the issue sorted, instead of letting it derail the customer journey. Think about it – would you feel confident hitting the buy button if you were getting an error message telling you that the website you’re visiting is insecure?
Maintaining your website is a lot easier if you have a plan. Here’s a list of weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual WordPress maintenance tasks that can help keep your website secure and save you worry.
Weekly WordPress Website Maintenance Tasks
- Check for updates – plugins, software and themes
- Back up your website (this can be automated), and make sure you have a copy that isn’t on your server
- Delete spam comments and respond to authentic comments on your blog posts
- Update website content – this can be as simple as adding an FAQ
Monthly WordPress Website Maintenance Tasks
- Check for broken links, and test that forms are working properly
- Review your analytics – e.g. where is most of your traffic coming from?
- Review all plugins, deactivate and delete any that you aren’t using
- Delete unused images from your media library to free up space
- Add new content to your site
- Check On-Page SEO – have you added a meta description, keywords, alt text, etc. to every page and post?
Quarterly WordPress Website Maintenance Tasks
- Review existing posts and pages, does any content need to be updated?
- Review your analytics – e.g. where is most of your traffic coming from?
- Review all plugins, deactivate and delete any that you aren’t using
- Delete unused images from your media library to free up space
- Add new content to your site and review existing posts – is the content still relevant
- Check your services pages still reflect what you do
Annual WordPress Website Maintenance Tasks
- Update the copyright year in your footer
- Review your analytics – e.g. where is most of your traffic coming from?
- Review all plugins, deactivate and delete any that you aren’t using
- Delete unused images from your media library to free up space
You can outsource these tasks to a technical support team, or you can empower yourself by learning to do the bulk of them yourself. By learning to make simple content updates, you also ensure that your website is always relevant to your audience.
Website maintenance doesn’t need to be scary. If you found this post helpful, you might also enjoy this post sharing tips to speed up your WordPress website.
