Website Maintenance – What Does This Actually Mean?

When you own a website, it’s never a “one and done” deal. It’s a project that takes continued effort.  You need to maintain it if you want to keep it performing well. Are you curious about what website maintenance entails, and what it means for your company?

Maintaining a website requires a team who can handle all of the following tasks:

• Domain and hosting management
• Security monitoring and updates
• Backup and recovery services
• Spam, Malware, and Virus removals
• Database maintenance
• Content updates
• Bug fixes
• Performance optimization
• SEO maintenance and optimization
• Analytics tracking and reporting
• Mobile responsiveness checks
• Link integrity checks

Without maintaining your site, your webpage will lose its rank on Google, see traffic drop, and become increasingly prone to bugs and hacks.

Getting to the nitty-gritty of website care often means requiring the help of a website maintenance company. Curious to know more? We have the full details below.

11 Services Included In Website Maintenance

Before we get into the full scope of keeping your website maintained, you should know what this all means. Good website maintenance packages will feature an all-in-one way to ensure your site remains up to date. Here’s what you should expect.

1. Domain and hosting management

In order for your site to be reachable online, it needs to have a domain name and a website host. Domain and hosting management ensures that your site is still online, and still under the correct site address.

If you decide to switch domain names or hosts, this management will involve transporting all your data and updating your links. This can take some time and requires careful planning to ensure minimal disruption to your site’s accessibility and search engine rankings. The process includes backing up your website data, transferring domain registration, updating DNS settings, and ensuring all internal and external links are accurately redirected to the new domain.

Additionally, it’s important to update your stakeholders and customers about the change to avoid confusion.

Overall, effective domain and hosting management is crucial for maintaining your online presence and ensuring a seamless user experience.

2. Security monitoring

By now, there isn’t a single person on the planet who hasn’t heard of a cyberattack. While it’s true that cyberattacks can happen to any company, small-to-medium businesses are most at risk.

Security monitoring features a wide range of different tasks, all of which protect your business:

• Security updates. This can include installing new security plugins, keeping your SSL certification up to date, and more.
• Fraud activity monitoring. Fraud activity includes watching and preventing fraudulent purchases made on your site as well as fraudulent logins.
• Data encryption. Keeping your data safe from hackers and leaks is crucial today.
• Vulnerability scanning. Is there a weakness on your site that you don’t know about? Routine vulnerability scanning can prevent hackers from exploiting issues.

3. Backup and recovery services

Even the best-kept sites can have a sudden failure, and when they do, it’s up to your maintenance practices to help you out. Website maintenance companies that do their job well will periodically back up your site and data.

Should anything happen to your website, backup services will ensure that your site won’t be permanently lost.

4. Spam, malware, and virus removal

Though you might have the best of intentions for the net, the truth is many people don’t. When bad things happen to good websites, you need to mitigate the damage. Whether it’s malware, virus, or spam removal, good site maintenance has this as a cornerstone of routine care.

In most cases, malware and virus removal can be automated. However, this isn’t always the case. When you have a newer virus, you will need professional removal services or site restoration.

Spam removal often means the blocking, prevention, and manual removal of spam comments on blog posts. This is more important for WordPress website maintenance, but almost any website can need this.

5. Database maintenance

Do you have defunct email addresses? Bad links? Database maintenance ensures that your data is both safe and up to date. Excellent website maintenance will involve ensuring that your databases work well.

In some cases, database maintenance can be automated based on the CRM that your site uses. When this happens, this form of maintenance gets done alongside most other technical SEO tasks.

6. Content updates

People only visit websites that have fresh, engaging content that is relevant to today’s world. A website that doesn’t regularly update its content or refresh prior blog posts is a site that won’t remain relevant.

Content updates will boost your SEO efforts, maintain your high ranking, and offer value to your clients. There is always something to report about or update, even in fields like Insurance SEO. Keeping an eye on current trends will always pay off for your site’s needs.

7. Bug fixes

In many cases, this is lumped in with virus removal or security monitoring. However, you can also just have a random bug that makes your site run poorly. A buggy site will drive away visitors and reduce the trust they have in your brand.

Great maintenance services will detect bugs and fix them as soon as possible. They also may help run a helpdesk where people can report a bug on the site that needs to be fixed. Like with any other part of your digital marketing campaign, it’s all about what your needs happen to be.

8. Performance optimization and mobile responsiveness checks

Did you know that sites that load in 1 second have conversion rates that are three times higher than those that load in 10? It’s true, and that is a testament to how important it is to have a site that runs smoothly.

Performance optimization is the science of making a site that loads fast, avoids glitches, and is user-friendly across multiple platforms.

Ideally, the site will work well on both desktop and mobile devices. After all, over 55 percent of all website traffic now comes from mobile devices. Mobile responsive sites conform to the dimensions of almost any mobile device.

Frequent checks from various device interfaces can help prevent awkward loading and raise alarms when it comes to problems that need to be addressed. Mobile responsiveness checks should be done as part of a typical website optimization audit.

9. SEO maintenance and optimization

SEO is the true rockstar of any website maintenance plan. Search Engine Optimization is all about creating a strategy that brings your website to the top of search results for keywords related to your business.

A good SEO plan will involve keyword research, content management, content creation, and a full site audit to help determine what needs to be changed. SEO is the only way to truly capture an organic portion of the digital market.

Companies that struggle with their brand reputation might also want to get SEO reputation management alongside regular site maintenance.

10. Analytics tracking and reporting

Analytics tracking and reporting allow site owners to see where their clients’ attention truly goes. It can help you understand your most-visited webpage, the highest-converting pages, as well as how long your typical visitor will spend reading a page.

Numbers don’t lie, and being able to trace conversions is a miracle-worker for business development. It unlocks your ability to maximize profits by pinpointing the best sales funnel for your needs.

You can see an example of this in action with a medspa in our case studies.

11. Link checks

In the world of website maintenance, the term “link rot” refers to links that point to vanished or redirected pages. It’s a phenomenon that’s more common than you think. Approximately 66.5 percent of all websites have at least one rotted link according to Ahrefs.

Dead links aren’t just a nuisance for viewers. They also can damage your search engine ranking. Regular link checks can prevent SEO-related issues and also bolster the overall experience that your visitors get.

Are you willing to do all your site maintenance in-house?

Creating a website maintenance plan is not for the faint of heart. It requires a wide range of skill sets that are typically learned through years of work. That’s why companies choose to go to Media Boom for everything from SEO content to real estate keyword development.

What are the main 4 Benefits of Website Maintenance?

Having a well-maintained site isn’t just for bragging rights. It comes with direct, tangible benefits for your business and its reputation.

These include the following:

1. Better security

In the world of business, trust is everything. Few things will sour a budding business relationship like a site that leaks user data or otherwise causes problems for clients. A secure site establishes trust in your business and your brand.

A highly secure website reduces the risk of malware, spam, viruses, and data breaches. Though there is no perfectly secure site, having up-to-date encryption, SSL certification, and security plugins will prevent most attacks.

2. Enhanced performance

Your website is your company’s “face” on the internet. Having a site that is properly maintained allows you to put your best foot forward—and not just on branding, either.

You owe it to your company to invest in a site that performs well in terms of speed, mobile responsiveness, and convenience. A site that loads fast gets better conversions. Mobile device responsiveness ensures your site remains accessible to all viewers.

The most powerful part of enhanced website performance comes with sales conversions. Great site maintenance and planning will help you streamline your sales funnels and transactions. The easier it is for people to order from you, the better off your profits will be.

3. Higher search engine rankings

The engineers who design search engines are not stupid. They are aware that promoting well-maintained, high-quality websites is in their best interest. As a result, search engines like Google have crawlers that check for things like dead links, outdated content, and expired SSL certificates.

Website maintenance involves keeping your site up-to-date enough to avoid penalization by Google. As the competition for high search engine rankings continues to climb, having a site that’s maintained properly becomes increasingly important.

4. Better user experience

Though much of the internet marketing world depends on SEO and paid advertising, the truth is that business development is a human activity. Your goal is not to please web crawlers. It’s to get people engaged.

Excellent marketing that truly understands your target audience will always deliver the best experience. Of course, that’s not possible without a functional website. A better user experience will naturally occur with a professionally-maintained, updated website.

A positive user experience is precisely what helped us get a 212 percent increase in leads for a real estate developer. At Mediaboom, our philosophy is that a great user experience will lead to far better outcome for your business. If you are not sure how to better reach your audience, don’t hesitate to ask for help.

How much does website maintenance cost?

Unfortunately, there is no clear-cut answer for this. Every site is going to be different, simply because the site’s needs are going to be different. An online store will not have the same needs as a blog, nor will it have the same needs as a video-heavy site.

Because every site is unique, the only way to find out how much your maintenance package would cost is to ask. Site maintenance can require a wide range of different services, all depending on what you want to do.

The good news is that you don’t have to pay to ask about site maintenance costs at Mediaboom. All you need to do is reach out, explain the situation, and let a professional evaluate your needs.

What website maintenance services can Mediaboom offer your company?

Mediaboom offers a wide range of different services for high-end businesses in need of upscale marketing. These include…

• Hosting and domain management
• SEO optimization
• Increased security
• Increased speed
• Technical error resolution
• Conversions tracking
• So much more!

You need to hire a Digital Marketing Agency

Right now, your company is focused on getting more customers and gaining a better reach for your brand. That’s already a lot to have on your plate, so why would you add the burden of maintaining and updating your website to that list?

If you’re ready to focus on your business rather than the technical tedium, it’s time to hire a marketing agency. Don’t wait until you need to fix your own bugs. Call Mediaboom today.